


Act Two

by KaerWrites



Series: The Tale of Leopold Hawke [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Retelling, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, M/M, Red Hawke with situational Blue, canon character death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 42,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaerWrites/pseuds/KaerWrites
Summary: Leopold Hawke is a hard man. He sees what needs doing, and he gets it done - whatever the price, he'll gladly pay it if it means protecting the ones he loves. Four years in Kirkwall have left Leo and his surviving family better off than they were when they first came to the City of Chains, but trouble is stirring, within and without. Canon retelling/novelization of the game's Act II.
Relationships: Carver Hawke/Merrill, Fenris/Male Hawke, Implied Merrill/Isabela, Unrequited Handers
Series: The Tale of Leopold Hawke [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789333
Comments: 166
Kudos: 78





	1. Carver

**Author's Note:**

> I have to preface this by saying this is most definitely a work in progress, so please proceed with caution. If you have not read my Act One retelling, please start there. A companion fic for the Legacy dlc is now up and takes place after Chapter 16.

Todric sounded more amused than put out when he said, “Imagine the cheek – a mage underground? They’ll feel they’ve been put underground, all right, once Meredith sees to it they never see daylight again. Eh? Eh?”

“I doubt the Knight Commander will find it as funny as you do,” Carver answered, a little tersely, as his friend jostled him with his elbow. “Meredith doesn’t like cheek. Cheek means someone’s not doing his job. Sounds like a pain in the ass to me.”

“Don’t be so gloomy,” Todric said. “This was your haul. You should be planning how you’re going to celebrate – and who with!”

Carver gave a grunt that managed to be quite a fair impression of a certain infamous member of his family – an accidental resemblance that did absolutely nothing to sooth the rising tide of his shitty mood. Sweat rolled down his back under his armor as he watched the long line of fugitive mages be led through the courtyard for processing. He felt like he was baking, and the lingering hangover from a night at the Rose didn’t help.

“Hey,” Todric said, and gave him a slap on the shoulder. “It’s a great haul. If I had your sources, I’d never pull latrine duty again. This – this is big. I’ll never understand why you don’t leverage yourself more.”

Carver didn’t acknowledge that at all. He felt his frown deepen, another wave of sweat rolling down his brow. There had been rumors of a growing cell of apostates within the city for years, but never enough proof to make it real – until today. The mages being shuffled into the courtyard below would all be Tranquil by sunset, Carver didn’t have a doubt. Officially, it would be because there was too much fight in them, because they would rile up the _good_ mages, give them ideas. Unofficially, it was because they would be easier to question once things like _loyalty_ and _love_ were stripped away.

Carver knew from experience that if he stared too hard, he would start to see Bethany’s face down among them, or his father’s, or Merrill’s, or –

He made himself watch, anyway, because he was responsible for this. The more mages he caught, the less interested anyone was in looking into any rumors concerning the Hawke family _or_ their associates. Carver was happy to make the trade – he’d decided years ago that it was something he would have to be comfortable living with. For Merrill. For Leo. It didn’t matter how many innocents went under the brand, so long as the people he loved were safe.

This was a major coup for the templars. Proof there _was_ a mage resistance. Proof that could get them more funding, more power. Carver’s reports said that he had noticed a man acting suspicious in the market, and followed a hunch. The truth, however…

Carver didn’t need to feel guilty. Which was good. Because he didn’t. Feel guilty. Right place, right time, end of story.

Of course, if Carver’s prick of an older brother ever caught wind, he’d never believe it. Carver had happened to be at the estate visiting Mother. He had happened to overhear that abomination his brother kept around, Anders, yammering on about the resistance, and a meeting he wanted Leo to attend. It had been an accident. Carver hadn’t been spying on his brother or his stupid friends, yet even still, he had agonized over the decision to make use of the information. Fucking _agonized_.

Carver knew that Leopold Hawke would never be caught dead in such a place. Carver knew that the only ones who would be hurt by his actions would be strangers who were breaking the law, and _maybe_ Anders, if he was caught along with them – which wouldn’t hurt Carver’s feelings one bit. He wouldn’t turn in one of his brother’s friends outright, but if he happened to get caught up in a sweep, that was hardly his fault. Yet Carver _still_ hesitated to do his job.

Then someone in the mess hall cracked a joke about noble families hiding mages in their attics.

Carver turned in his information.

They caught over half the cell.

Carver had done what needed doing. He’d done his bloody job. He wouldn’t be thanked for it – not by anyone that mattered – but he didn’t need to waste time feeling guilty about it, either.

“Maker,” Todric snickered, “I love it when they cry.”

“I need some air,” Carver said, and excused himself. His armor felt heavy, and swelteringly hot, as he took the stairs down into the courtyard. He didn’t let himself avoid walking past the line of mages. He didn’t know any of them. He didn’t need to feel guilty. Leopold fucking Hawke wasn’t the only one capable of sacrificing bits of his soul for the good of his family – Carver just didn’t expect to be treated like a bloody hero for it.

Not that he’d object if someone wanted to treat him like a bloody hero. It’d be nice to get a little recognition every once in a while. Leo thought it was his own work that had kept the templars off his back these last few years – his frequent and generous charitable donations to the chantry, his willingness to round up the odd abomination every once in a while. It probably never even occurred to the obnoxious prick how Carver protected him from _within_ the Order. His first thoughts had been how Carver had betrayed him – not how Carver could help him. Typical. Carver had known he wouldn’t get a thank you, but a part of him had hoped.

Carver stopped.

As if his thoughts had summoned him, Leopold Hawke was there, standing in the Gallows courtyard, his back straight and his shoulders squared, his chin lifted arrogantly – like it didn’t even occur to him, the danger he put himself in every time he came there. It probably didn’t, the prick. Carver knew the set of his brother’s jaw, the light in those amber eyes. Probably thought he was invincible, talking to some grizzled veteran in his bold, direct manner. No other mage would dare act in such a way, not in a thousand years.

It had been at least six months since Carver had seen him – and more than a year since Mother had gotten them into the same room. But Carver knew his brother.

He still had his pets trailing him. Carver wondered if the abomination Anders was still panting over Leo like a dog in heat. He wondered if the elf Fenris had realized yet the direction Leo’s affections truly lay – if Leo himself realized it, or if he was still trying to deny he’d wanted nothing more than to bend that prickly murder porcupine over since the moment they met.

Mostly, Carver wondered at the gall, that his brother would dare bring Merrill along to a place like this.

She spotted Carver first, brightening and waving and, when Carver didn’t immediately wave back, waving harder, until Leo finally noticed, and looked up, and scowled.

Cursing under his breath, Carver began to make his way over to them. Leo finished his business with the veteran before Carver could get close enough to hear what they were talking about. He didn’t like the frowning, suspicious look the veteran cast on him as he approached, or how quickly he made himself scarce once his business was seen to.

Carver had every intention of warning his brother against who he took his jobs from – not everyone in the Order was as scrupulous as Carver had believed as a child – but instead, what came out of his mouth was, “You’d better have a bloody good reason for being here.”

Leo’s hard, stoic expressions were often difficult for others to read, but Carver didn’t miss the way Leo’s face hardened at the greeting.

“What I do on my time is my concern,” Leo answered, and Carver felt his anger swell. He stepped closer, ready for a fight.

“Not when you bring Merrill along, it isn’t.”

Leo stepped in, his big form filling Carver’s space. Carver hoped he threw a punch. Oh, how he bloody wished for it.

“Oh, Carver!” Merrill said. “Do you want to go to lunch with us? Don’t be cross with your brother, it was my idea to tag along today.”

“Why would you - ?”

“Did you know the Viscount’s gardens are _not_ open to the public?” Merrill asked. “Seems a very silly rule to me. The guards are quite tetchy about it, though. So Hawke said I could stick close to him ‘till things settle down. He’s such a dear, isn’t he?”

“That’s not the word I would use,” Carver said, though he did back off, lest their mutual antagonism attract unwanted attention. “I’ll walk you home.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t want to stay cooped up in the house today when there’s so much to do. You can almost see the sunshine in Lowtown. It’s lovely.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Carver said, convinced she couldn’t look more magelike.

“If I wasn’t here, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” she said. “So, you see, things really do work out nicely sometimes. Are you certain you won’t go to lunch with us?”

Carver realized he wasn’t going to win. Arguing with her would only upset her, and draw more attention they didn’t need.

More importantly, Carver realized that Anders had noticed the line of mages being processed just as the last of them left the courtyard. He stared after them, his face gone unnaturally pale, hands clenched at his sides. His bony shoulders had scrunched up under the mottled feathers of his mantle, giving him an almost buzzard-like appearance – and Carver knew they were moments away from disaster.

“You know what, lunch sounds incredible. Let’s go. Right now. My dear brother can afford to treat, I’m sure.”

“Anders,” Leo said, having followed Carver’s train of thought. His voice was low and hard, and contained a warning.

Carver braced himself for the worst. For just a moment, he contemplated grabbing Merrill and making a run for it – but he couldn’t quite bring himself to abandon Leo, even after the river of unfiltered shit that ran between them.

He didn’t expect it when the abomination shook himself, and the color returned to his cheeks, and he turned his attention to Leo. He did not manage to smile, though his mouth seemed to make some small attempt at such a thing.

Carver considered it a bleeding miracle to get the lot of them out of the Gallows without incident.

“You could at least _try_ not to bring every apostate you know with you when you do work for the Order,” Carver said, later, as they walked through the busy Docks district. He kept his voice low.

“If they’re with me, I know they aren’t getting themselves into trouble elsewhere,” Leo answered, his own voice gruff and quiet and not meant for the others to hear, and for a weird moment Carver felt proud of the fact that, at least today, Carver was not the one Leo felt obligated to babysit. “Anyway, I wasn’t doing anything for the Order.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Leo stopped. “Do you know anything about the murders Emeric’s been trying to investigate?”

“That was Emeric? No, I haven’t heard anything, just that he’s wasted a lot of people’s time jumping at shadows.”

Leo grunted and turned away, beginning to walk again.

Carver was beginning to remember why his life was happier when he didn’t speak to his brother.

\--

This early in the afternoon, the Hanged Man was fairly quiet. There were better places to find a bite to eat in Lowtown, and most of the bar’s local patrons were still sleeping off the previous night’s regrets.

It had been quite some time since Carver had stepped through those doors; the Hanged Man was, without question, Leopold Hawke’s territory. Better to go somewhere else than to spoil his mood and his evening running into his brother and his friends - none of which had ever liked Carver, except for Merrill.

But it was like stepping through a door into the past to walk into the Hanged Man that afternoon, to find Varric in his usual chair at his usual table, contracts and manuscripts and who knew what else spread out before him. The same number of chairs sat around the table. The same drunk slumbered in the same corner. The same silent competition happened over who got the chair next to Leo’s, the elf or the mage. Even the sawdust on the floor could have been the same.

Carver gave a shaky laugh.

“Sandwiches and ale – on the dwarf’s tab,” Leo said, as Carver sat in his old familiar seat, just as he used to. Suddenly, he was eighteen again, fresh from the loss at Ostagar, and Bethany’s death, and his exciting nights working with the Red Iron, and here was this cocky dwarf with a scheme, promising to get them into his expedition.

“Pardon me – that’s my chair, I’m afraid.” The unfamiliar voice broke Carver from his memories. He didn’t know the man who stood above him – a brunette with striking blue eyes.

“Who the Void are you supposed to be?” Carver asked.

Leo answered, “That’s Sebastian,” as if that was supposed to mean something.

“I’m afraid I was here first,” Sebastian said, and gestured to the half-full plate that Carver had failed to notice.

“Pull up another chair, Junior, there’s plenty of room,” Varric advised.

“ _I_ was here first,” Carver grumbled, but he moved, anyway.

The table was still filling up. Isabela came down half-dressed, curls a riot, fingers still tugging her laces tight – a scene Carver had witnessed many times. Aveline ducked in for a bite and some coffee, warning that she couldn’t stay, and that was familiar, too.

Carver ended up on a wobbly chair pulled up to the table’s corner, balancing his plate on his knees as Leo handed out the cuts from the last job and started to discuss the next one, and it was all so familiar, so comfortable, so routine.

Except now Carver was on the outside.

\--

After, Merrill finally agreed to let Carver walk her home. She slipped her little hand into his palm, and beamed up at him as if she were the sun.

“Now, that was such a nice way to spend the afternoon,” she said. “It makes me feel warm and safe, having the family back together. I feel like it’s been ages since I saw you and your brother together at the same time.”

“My schedule,” Carver began, lamely, as he had so many other times, and Merrill waved him off.

“Oh, I know,” she said. “You’re a big, important man, now.”

“I like it when you call me a man.”

“Yes, my big, strapping boy,” she said, and Carver deflated a little. Merrill laughed, and patted his hand. “The templars need to keep the good ones like you busy, so the bad ones don’t get too rowdy.”

Carver thought, guiltily, of the resistance cell, the information he’d turned in – information he’d had no right to. Leo hadn’t known he was there, hadn’t known he’d been listening. Leo had no issue turning over mages who proved to be threats to themselves or others – but he’d always left Anders and his resistance cells alone. Carver was the one willing to harm innocents for his own greater good.

He stopped, and Merrill stopped with him, her head tilted curiously.

“Are you going to kiss me?” Merrill asked. “You looked like you wanted to kiss me.”

“Merrill,” Carver said, then sighed, because now that she’d brought it up, he did indeed want to kiss her – but he couldn’t let himself be distracted. “Why are you still doing jobs for my brother?”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do with my time?” she asked, and laughed. “I have to support myself somehow, and we have great fun, sometimes.”

“Fun?” Carver asked. “He took you to the Gallows today.”

“Oh, I was perfectly safe!” she said. “Hawke would never let anything bad happen to me. You know that.”

“Merrill,” he said again, but she was walking backwards now, tugging him with her.

“Come along, Carver Hawke,” she said. “Aren’t there better things we can do with our time than talk about your brother?”


	2. Anders

“He looked good,” Hawke said abruptly, after Carver and Merrill had left. It was an understood and undiscussed rule among the group that one Carver Hawke was a forbidden topic of conversation. Hawke’s words seemed to surprise him just as much as they surprised his friends. He looked startled in the moment before he frowned, brows drawn down and lips pressed thin, as if accusing his own words of escaping without permission. “He looked healthy, I mean,” Hawke continued, more captive words making their brave escape from the prison behind his teeth, and when he, scowling thoughtfully, looked to Anders for confirmation, Anders momentarily lost himself.

“The Chantry always keeps their boys looking beefy – it’s all that lyrium. Makes a body strong – good for bullying innocent mages.” He laughed without humor, and shoveled another sandwich into his mouth, and it was almost a full minute before it occurred to him that he had probably said the wrong thing.

Anders straightened his spine, slowly aware that Hawke was still frowning, that half the table was avoiding his eye. He finished chewing.

“I mean, he looked fit and healthy,” Anders said. “Healer’s oath on that. You don’t need to worry about his well-being. Not physically, anyway.”

“You know Daisy keeps a good eye on him, Hawke,” Varric said, more gently, and Anders couldn’t help but put his foot in it again.

“Right,” he said. “Well, we all know what good judgement _she_ has. I’m sure that’s reassuring. Courting a blood mage is a great way to stay happy and healthy.”

“Maker, Blondie, _stop_.”

Anders reached for another sandwich. Everyone else had finished long ago, but his warden stamina had yet to be satisfied. It was Hawke who quietly made certain extra was always ordered, Hawke who casually stayed seated at the table so that Anders wouldn’t have to eat alone. It was that subtle, backhanded, understated _Hawke_ consideration that Anders loved him for. Hawke could be thoughtful, when he thought no one was looking. Anders had seen him do hard, terrible things – but as long as that secret kindness lurked inside, he knew there was still hope for him.

“Hawke knows I don’t mean any harm,” Anders said at last. “Are we going to pretend Carver hasn’t been looking for a bad end since day one?”

“We should change the subject,” Fenris announced. His frown was pointed.

Fenris, Anders had decided, simply didn’t understand Hawke. He took him for what he was – not what he _could_ be. It made a twisted kind of sense why Hawke kept him around, once Anders realized this. It felt good to be coddled, to be allowed to look away from the ugliness of what his fellow mages went though, to be supported when he failed to think beyond the rigid system of beliefs Malcolm Hawke had instilled in him.

But Hawke didn’t need someone to support him, he needed someone to challenge him. He didn’t need someone who would sit by while he beat himself up over making a shitty decision – he needed someone who would reinforce for him just how and why his decision had been shitty. He needed, Anders reasoned, someone to stand up to him, to push him, to bash him with pure, brutal, ugly honesty, no matter how angry he got. Hawke needed someone to drive it home when he was wrong, when he was being a monster.

Anders loved him enough to be that person.

It wasn’t always easy. They had had their battles over the years. And yes, sometimes it hurt – sometimes it spiked something green and sharp and ugly within him when he watched Hawke and Fenris stand close, when he saw Hawke’s features smooth and soften and relax at the sound of the elf’s rancid voice.

But one day it would all be worth it.

Hawke was a good man, deep, deep, deep below that hard exterior, and Anders would be the one to help him to see it. He would be there the day Hawke was shattered and Leo, the kind, fearless champion of justice emerged.

Anders pushed back the growing pressure of a headache building behind his eyes, and he gave Hawke a smile.

\--

Hawke would not be investigating the DuPois estate until after nightfall – the better the chance of catching the murderer unaware, if indeed Emeric’s lead paid off.

“It’s the best we have to go on,” Hawke said, when Aveline asked if he really thought they would accomplish anything more than possibly annoying a noble family.

“It feels like Emeric’s been chasing ghosts all these years,” Aveline said.

“We have to try,” Hawke answered.

She agreed to do what she could about the guard patrols. “But mark me, Hawke, if you get caught climbing through a stranger’s window one more time, I’ll be prompt about forgetting your name.”

“Sounds like a fair deal,” Hawke said, with a hint of his rare, boyish grin, and she laughed and gave his big shoulder a pat as she rose from her chair.

Somehow, as the group broke for the afternoon, Anders lucked into getting Hawke to himself – a rare feat, considering how Fenris had become something of a second shadow to the man over the past few years.

“I need to borrow you, elf,” Varric had said as they prepared to part ways, and Fenris had laughed, relaxed and at-ease, and settled back into his chair.

“Is your publisher still giving you fits over that contract?” he asked, and the dwarf made a show of rolling his eyes.

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” he said. “I don’t know why that man is so intimidated by you, but I’d be at least twelve kinds of fool if I didn’t take full advantage of it. I’m not speaking a word to him unless you’re sitting right there.”

“I can be amenable to that,” Fenris said pleasantly. “I shall endeavor to look threatening, then.”

“I, for one, am absolutely terrified,” Hawke said dryly as he rose. Fenris chuckled.

Isabela and Sebastian had already made their excuses, and Anders was all that was left. When Hawke asked if he needed to get back to the clinic, Anders didn’t hesitate with his answer.

“It hasn’t been busy lately,” Anders lied, “But I do need to stock up on supplies. I could use a strong arm to carry the basket.”

He warmed when Hawke gave something close to a smile.

“All right, Anders,” Hawke said. “I can be your errand boy for a little while.”

Anders did the shopping for the clinic once a month, when he could risk doing it himself. The assistants and volunteers who helped him keep the clinic going rarely got it right – they would miss something on the list, or get the wrong kind, or overpay. Sometimes a cutpurse would make off with a month’s allowance.

In any case, it was always better for Anders to go himself, provided he wasn’t working for Hawke or laying low to avoid another templar inquiry. After the first dozen, it started to look suspicious. The current supply list was already rather long, but he hadn’t been planning to go for another week.

“I appreciate the help,” Anders told him as they stepped out into the street. The smoke from the foundry was heavy today, and rain was threatening somewhere far above. The air felt thick and sticky.

“I wanted to stick near you today, anyway,” Hawke said. “This is just as good an excuse as any.”

Anders missed a step, and he felt his heart give a little hop and a skip, but he pushed it down. “Oh?” he asked, as casually as he could.

“I wanted to talk with you in private,” Hawke said. “About this morning.”

“Oh,” Anders said, and despite his best efforts, disappointment swept in. He rolled his shoulders, ready for the inevitable fight.

“You knew those mages,” Hawke said. It wasn’t a question.

“I controlled myself!”

“But you knew them.”

“Only one,” Anders said. “No one in the resistance knows everyone else. It’s safer that way.”

“But that _was_ one of your groups.”

“Yes,” Anders said, and he couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone. “The blighted templars took nearly an entire cell.”

Hawke was quiet for a beat. Anders knew that particular stony expression on his face. Sullenly, he prepared himself for the coming lecture. His headache was coming back. He looked around the crowded marketplace, half convinced every strangers’ face was full of mockery. He felt foolish that he’d thought -

“Will the templars be able to use them to find you?” Hawke asked at last.

The question surprised him. They stopped at a cart carrying plump aloe leaves, and he watched Hawke surreptitiously as he examined them.

“I only had one contact in the group,” Anders said at last. “And I never gave him my name.”

Hawke nodded, and he motioned to the vendor, who wrapped several leaves in paper. Hawke paid with his own money, and put them in the basket.

“You have to be careful with this shit, Anders,” Hawke said, and his voice was low and hard. Anders felt his hackles rising again. His headache flared sharply.

“Almost a dozen mages are going to end the night Tranquil, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and you expect me to be worried about _myself_?”

“An easy way to end a movement would be to cut it off at the head,” Hawke said. “Do you think the mage underground would exist without you? Do you think it could continue to? You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”

“What does that matter to you? You don’t care about the mages!”

“ _Lower your voice_!”

Anders didn’t want to, but he obeyed. “You send mages to the Gallows all the time!” he hissed.

“Yes, I do,” Hawke agreed. “When they pose a danger to themselves or others, yes, I do. That doesn’t mean I think the Circle is a kind fate, or that I want them to suffer. But without responsible magic use…”

“Every templar worth his salt knows there are mages in Darktown,” Anders said. “The underground is doing just fine, no thanks to you. They haven’t caught us yet.” Pressure thrummed in his forehead, waiting just behind his eyes. He wanted to fight. He wanted to have it out, right here in the marketplace. For a moment, it was the only thing in the world he wanted. “Do you have any idea how many we got out of the city last year alone? At least – how many that you didn’t immediately drag back?”

Hawke didn’t answer. He looked away, and didn’t respond. He pinched the bridge of his nose, his jaw set, and almost visibly counted to ten. Then he moved on to the next stall.

By the time Anders caught up to him, he had added a thick parcel of salt and a bundle of linen to the basket, paid again from his own pocket. Anders felt his anger draining, slowly, like dirty water in a clogged sink. The pressure in his head began to clear.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually.

Hawke answered, “I know.”

“I know you aren’t ready to understand. I shouldn’t lose my temper. You’re still learning.”

Hawke didn’t answer again. A jar of hensbane went into the pile. Money changed hands. (Later, Anders would also find a tin of his favorite tea, among other treats.) Anders couldn’t help but to feel as if something golden had been spoiled. The opportunity to have Hawke to himself had become increasingly rare. He should have turned the attention away from the mages. Should have gotten Hawke smiling, should have made sure the man enjoyed their time together.

“Believe it or not,” Anders said, “I used to be a really good time.”

“Maybe it’s best if there’s some things we don’t discuss.”

Anders winced. After a while, he said, “I feel like we’ve said that before.”

“It’s been three years,” Hawke said. “I wish you’d stopped assuming the worst of me by now.” He offered the basket, and Anders took it. It was heavier than he had expected. He knew, immediately, that Hawke had slipped some groceries in among the clinic supplies. By the time he got a good grip on the basket, Hawke was ahead of him. Anders had to dodge and weave around other shoppers to catch up to those broad shoulders.

“You’re not going to escort me back to Darktown?” Anders asked, as lightly as he could. Hawke glanced at him from the corner of his eye, and for a moment it seemed he would continue walking without a word.

Then he sighed, and took the basket back.

He said, “Lead the way.”


	3. Fenris

“The deLauncets are wondering how many more times you’re going to back out of Dulcie’s dinner invitation,” Leandra said from somewhere behind him. Hawke glanced at the dwarven timepiece on the mantle before he put down his pen and turned to face his mother. As he had expected, it was very late.

“Mother,” he greeted, perhaps warily.

She was dressed for bed, the Orlesian silk robe Carver had sent her for her birthday thrown over a Ferelden flannel nightdress. Her hair had been neatly plaited and tucked up under a cap. She also wore a stubborn, angry expression.

“Explain yourself,” Leandra said, tossing a perfumed calling card down onto the pile of bills and invoices that covered Hawke’s desk.

Hawke rubbed his face, then sat back in his chair.

“Can we do this later?” he asked. “I’ve had a very, very long day.”

“They may not have the best reputation in Kirkwall, but the deLauncets are still a powerful family – and Fifi and Babette are lovely girls.” When Hawke groaned, she jabbed a finger at the card. “Do you think the Amell name will continue to carry you? The deLauncets may be foreigners, but their name carries more weight than _Hawke_. You _need_ connections if you are to have any hope of acceptance here. We don’t want the nobility to feel threatened by you – or to think too hard about where you came from!”

“Yes,” Hawke said, as slowly and as patiently as he could. “I understand your point, mother, I do. Something came up.”

“Something always ‘comes up’!”

“I’m busy.”

“Do you think I’m a fool? That pretending to listen will placate me? Admit that you never had any interest in cooperating!”

“Mother…”

“This is the situation with the Rhinehardts all over again!”

Hawke felt himself scowling. “I will admit that I don’t appreciate the manner of connection you have in mind for me, no,” he acknowledged. “You can parade any number of fine, empty headed ladies in front of me. We both know I won’t be interested.”

Leandra threw up her hands in exasperation.

“Marriage is only a matter of political connection!” she said.

“You eloped with an apostate, mother.”

Bright color bloomed on Leandra’s face – a matter more to do with anger than shame. “That was different,” she said. “Besides, we’ve more than paid the price of my impulsiveness. What parent doesn’t long to provide better for her children than what she had herself?”

“You had love.”

The statement seemed to stun Leandra – then make her more angry. Reaching past him, she tore the calling card back from the desk, knocking over his inkwell and sending several papers to the floor in the process.

Hawke was almost annoyed enough that he used magic to clean it up – but Hawke did not use magic frivolously or in haste, and certainly not in anger. He managed to stop himself at the last moment. Hawke was tired, and he was sore, and he was angry. Magic would have been too easy.

Hawke pushed to his feet, found a rag, and began trying to salvage what he could of the mess. His mother watched him, still radiating fury.

“I suppose you would rather I tell the deLauncets that you’re courting that elf?” Leandra said at last, coldly. Hawke sighed.

“I’m not courting any elf, mother.”

“I’m rescheduling this,” Leandra said, waving the card at him.

“I’m busy that day,” Hawke answered.

Leandra turned on her heel and stalked to the door. She nearly barreled over the elf who stood there on her way out.

“Fenris,” she greeted stiffly. “What a _surprise_. You’re here late.”

“At this hour, I believe it may be accurate to say I am here early,” he answered, voice amicable.

Hawke busied himself salvaging what he could of the papers, and he told himself that the task wasn’t an excuse to avoid meeting the elf’s eyes. He wasn’t sure how long Fenris had been standing there, or how much he’d heard. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

When he did finally look up, it was to find his mother gone, and Fenris frowning after her. The sharp planes of his handsome face wore an expression of displeasure, and even with everything else going on, Hawke enjoyed the moment to watch him unobserved. At last Fenris shook his head and came out of whatever thoughts had held him. He seemed surprised when he found Hawke’s eyes on him.

“My apologies for the intrusion at such an hour,” Fenris said. “Your dwarf assured me that you would be up, and that I was welcome to come in. I do not think he has the matter of the household arts quite fully in hand yet.”

“If I’m honest, I have to say that I appreciate the excuse to end the argument early,” Hawke told him. He tossed the ink-soaked rag into the fire, and sat down again, heavily. “I’m glad it was you.”

“Then I retract my apology,” Fenris said. “It is my pleasure to be of assistance.”

“Why are you here?”

The elf’s shoulders lifted in an elegant shrug. He helped himself to his favorite chair in the study, curling one leg under himself as he sat. “You don’t sleep well on nights when you’ve killed people,” he said, simply.

“I kill a lot of people,” Hawke reminded him. Again, Fenris offered him that shrug, and an unflinching look, and Hawke decided that it would be better not to press him. Fenris had a way of understanding him, of showing up just when Hawke needed him the most. It was best not to question that too closely. It eased something within him to have him near.

“I thought things would grow simpler once the matter of my family’s nobility was settled,” Hawke admitted, watching as Fenris shifted, and stretched his bare feet toward the fire, wiggling his lyrium-tipped toes. He had become a frequent enough visitor in the years since their time together in the Deep Roads that he never required the usual formalities afforded a guest.

“In my experience,” Fenris answered, “Adding titles and estates and riches rarely does more than serve to further complicate things.”

Hawke liked the rich roll of his voice, and he liked how relaxed the elf seemed to be in his space. He could already feel the knots in his shoulders beginning to soften, the stress and the doubts and the darkness that plagued his mind beginning to recede.

“So, you’re saying I should feel relieved that things have settled as well as they have? Interesting proposition.” Hawke glanced at the mess left on his desk – mostly threatening invoices from Gamlen’s creditors – then decided that it could wait another night. He turned his attention back to Fenris. “Do you think my mother is just bored?”

“I hear that matchmaking is a time-honored tradition of many mothers the world over,” Fenris said. “I haven’t the experience, myself.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Which part?”

“Both.”

Fenris chuckled, regarding the fire. His lips curled upwards, the perfect cupid’s bow of his mouth wicked with teasing. “I will say, had I known we were courting, I would have endeavored to wear a nicer tunic.”

“All right,” Hawke growled. “I’ve had about enough of you, elf.”

He was gratified by the man’s answering laughter, by the catlike way he stretched again, comfortable, by the heavy-lidded, relaxed expression in his eyes. Fenris could never really feel safe or at ease in his stolen mansion, continually haunted by the specter of his master’s return, the threat that it might occur some night when he was alone, and asleep, and vulnerable. But he could feel safe here. He could trust Hawke to watch his back. That meant something.

Hawke rose and went to the liquor cabinet.

“Are you taking your mother to chantry services tomorrow?” Fenris asked casually. Hawke could feel his eyes on his back as he poured them each a glass of rich amber bourbon.

“If I haven’t found a way out of it over the course of the past three years, I doubt I will find it within the next several hours.”

“If I asked to accompany you, would you find yourself adverse to the idea?”

The request surprised him. When Hawke glanced back at him in question, Fenris only blinked at him.

“I’m not adverse,” Hawke said. “But it seems like a terrible way to convince my mother that the two of us are only friends.”

Fenris offered him a shrug. “Who says we’re friends?” he asked. He accepted the drink Hawke handed him, and Hawke took the armchair beside him. They sat in silence for a time, as they had countless other times throughout the past three years.

Fenris’s visits were sporadic, never pre-planned, but frequent enough that Hawke looked forward to them. Hawke made it a habit to drop in on Fenris, frequently, too, but that was different. It seemed a welcome break for the elf to sit in comfort in Hawke’s study, away from the shadows that haunted Danarius’s mansion. The edge that Fenris carried there did not follow him here.

“Sebastian seems to think the Maker will give me peace,” Fenris said at last. He sounded more amused with the idea than merely speculative.

“I didn’t think you were listening to his advice.”

“I wasn’t,” he chuckled. “Attending a service is the price I must pay for a spectacular loss at cards.”

“He tricked you.”

“He tricked me.”

“I warned you.”

“You did warn me.” Fenris lifted his glass and examined the play of light through the liquid inside as Hawke imagined the scandal and outrage that it would inspire among Hightown’s elite when their upstart Fereldan neighbor showed up with an elf in the Amell family pew. He enjoyed the thought of it almost too much, and he started, guiltily, when Fenris’s gaze lifted and settled warmly upon him. “Now,” the elf said. “What shall be the topic of discussion tonight?”

\--

Hawke had had an unpleasant day, and he had too much on his mind, and somehow Fenris’s presence just had a way of softening that, of lifting the weight that bore down on Hawke’s shoulders and easing the tension that left him tight and on edge and ready to lash out. The alcohol helped, too, but not as much as the elf.

And Hawke – Hawke tended to get _affectionate_ when he drank. Even a single glass of something strong would lower his inhibitions enough to bring down some of his stern exterior and allow him to more freely express his fondness for his friends. It gave, perhaps, a glimpse of the man he might have been, had hardships and loss and Malcolm’s strict training not dug out all of the softest parts of him.

It had taken a while for Hawke to grow comfortable enough to drink more than a single watered-down ale with his friends, for him to have the kind of trust in them that such a thing required. Silent agreement among them all ensured that no one brought up the effects later, once he did indulge, lest Hawke be too embarrassed to do so again. They enjoyed the chance to see him smile, relax, soften.

During nights at the Hanged Man, it was not remarkable at all for their stern, aggressive Hawke to grow funny and fond after his second or third drink, for him to pick up Varric in a sudden, crushing bear hug, or ruffle Merrill’s hair in a gesture of brotherly affection, to throw a heavy arm around Anders’s shoulders when telling a funny story from his childhood, or let Isabela spill into his lap over cards, or give Aveline’s cheek a kiss as she set out for a late round – or even to slip his hand under the table to thoughtlessly rest atop Fenris’s thigh – a habit the elf had never acknowledged nor objected to.

So it was nothing, thoughtless and unremarkable, that after a few glasses of bourbon and a few hours of low, comfortable conversation, when Hawke rose to see Fenris out, his big hand fell naturally to the small of Fenris’s back.

It was nothing for them to smile warmly at each other as they murmured their goodbyes in the Amell threshold, lit by the early light of dawn.

It was nothing for Hawke, leaning his big shoulder against the doorframe, to watch Fenris’s departure for as long as he could, until that snowy head turned a corner and disappeared into what was left of the night.

They were only friends.

\--

Of course, they had discussed it before – the idea of becoming something other than friends. The last time had been six months ago, or thereabouts, one rainy night in Fenris’s stolen mansion, as they sat together over wine listening to the fire pop and hiss.

Hawke had alluded to the possibility that they might attempt to explore the connection between them, and Fenris had confessed that he had not been with anyone since his escape, that he had been hesitant even to attempt such a thing.

“You are a man unlike any other, Hawke,” Fenris had said. “With you it might be different.” Looking a little panicked by his own words, Fenris had promised to think on it.

It never came up again.

Hawke let it go.

Oh – they still flirted, from time to time. Hawke still found his hand gravitating inexplicably to Fenris’s thigh after the second round of drinks at the Hanged Man. They still sought each other out to talk, or even just to sit in silence, each seeming to take some form of comfort from the other’s presence.

But Hawke let it go. They were friends, nothing more.

Hawke could be content with that.


	4. Hawke

Hawke managed to get two, almost three, hours of sleep before the smell of coffee and burning bacon proved more alluring than his usual tossing and turning. His pillow seemed to have maliciously grown extra lumps in the time since he had lain down, and his sheets were sweaty, and twisted around his legs. Blearily, Hawke splashed his face with cold water and made a halfhearted attempt to finger-comb his hair into some sort of order before he threw on a mostly-clean shirt and headed downstairs.

Leandra, perhaps knowing it served a better chance for catching him, had eschewed the dining room for the informality of the kitchen table this morning. She looked positively regal in her Orlesian robe, with her dark coffee and her neat stack of morning correspondence, her stationary box open at her elbow. Hawke stopped when he saw her, and for a long, long moment he considered breaking his fast elsewhere.

Then his mother looked up and saw him, and it was too late. His moment had passed.

“I’ll be interviewing more cooks today,” Leandra said without preamble, and Hawke nodded and reached for the coffee and diplomatically refrained from pointing out that it was Leandra’s exacting standards that had left the estate so short on staff in the first place. He’d handed the matter over to her after he got tired of going through the process of hiring help only to have his mother fire them within the week. The only reason that Bodahn was still here was the dwarf’s refusal to be dismissed.

“No Orlesians,” Hawke said, sternly. “Maker, that was the worst week of my life.”

Leandra waved off his concern as she lifted her cup. Hawke had to cautiously consider the fact that she was talking to him a good sign, after the way they had left things last night, though a hint of frost yet remained in her voice.

“And a very good morning to you, _messere_!” Bodahn said cheerfully. The plate he placed before Hawke consisted of mostly-raw eggs, very burnt bacon, and exactly three peas, two of which were cold.

The entire offering was still better than what the Orlesian chef Leandra had hired had tried to serve him. At least he knew the names of the things on his plate – and while they might give him food poisoning, none of them would taste like despair. And Bodahn made a fine pot of coffee.

“You don’t have a guest this morning?” Leandra asked after a few moments. She asked it carefully, without looking at him, thumbing through her correspondence as if it was merely an idle observation, and there were no hidden needles in her words.

“Are you asking if Fenris spent the night?” Hawke asked, a little stiffly.

“Well, you are a grown man,” she answered. “And I know you don’t share your brother and uncle’s fascination with… _fallen women_. What else am I to assume?”

“I am not hearing this,” Hawke said. He pushed back his chair.

“Don’t go!” Leandra protested before Hawke could rise. Her attention was on him now, no more games, one hand extended toward him as if to stop him moving. Hawke paused, wary.

Leandra took a moment to gather herself. “I wanted to apologize for last night,” she said at last. “For…pushing you.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“Is it? You have to know how I worry for you, dear,” Leandra said. She leaned forward to place her hand atop his forearm. “You’re right that what I’m asking of you isn’t fair. When I was young, there were still enough Amells for me to squander my connections. You don’t have the same luxury. Even with my family’s crest, you’re a new money foreigner to most of the families here. You don’t know how vicious nobility can be. You don’t want Kirkwall turning against you.”

“I understand the advice,” Hawke said, and his voice was hard. His mother sighed and retrieved her hand.

“I don’t want you to think you can’t have your elf over just because of this,” she said. “It’s marriage we’re discussing, not love. I do know where your tastes really lie. I’m not blind.”

“Charming.”

Leandra sighed, and added sugar to her coffee, and began looking through her correspondence again. Hawke knew better than to believe that this was the last they would speak on the topic. He began to rise again, gathering his dishes. Flower would appreciate the breakfast far more than Hawke had.

“I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t remarry,” Leandra said, casually, just as he was about to make his escape, and Hawke stopped, glancing back at her with a mixture of surprise and suspicion, wondering if this was a new tactic to get him to agree to her matchmaking. She smiled as if she could read his mind, and shook her head. “I’m sure the last thing you need is your mother watching over your shoulder every time you come home…but perhaps there is still life once your children have outgrown you.”

She was smiling, gentle, a version of his mother he had rarely seen since his father’s death. Hawke was still wary. “You’ve been through a lot,” he said cautiously, all too aware of how quickly this could be turned into a fight – or, worse, an attempt to manipulate him into doing what she wanted. “You deserve any joy you can find.”

“Thank you, love,” she answered, and seemed actually to mean it. Hawke set his jaw. “No one could ever replace your father,” Leandra continued, “But it is refreshing to think I could still be courted at this age. Anyway…I’ve seen the way you and that elf look at each other.”

Hawke took a breath to deny it, but decided to let it drop. It was peace, and he would take it. He could see the hints of the good his mother thought she was doing, even if the stress she put on him was difficult at times to manage.

“All right, mother,” Hawke said. “I really am leaving now.”

“Will you be back in time for services?”

“I’m just getting some breakfast. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me.”

“I don’t know why you still take those jobs,” she sighed. “I hate that you put yourself in such danger.”

“You’d say the same when we went out to work the fields.”

“Your father had you boys out there far too early!” she said. “I’ll forever be grateful I was able to keep Bethany inside with me, sweet girl.”

Hawke shook his head. For a moment, he was there again, a boy of twelve rising with the sun to help his father plow the fields. Carver, at five, had been far too young to be of use, but there had been no leaving him behind. Malcolm would put him up on the back of their big draft horse, let him think he was leading her, even as he warned that he would be sent back inside the moment he voiced one word of complaint. Those complaints were inevitable, once the sun got hot and the task boring. Hawke had never had the luxury of being sent in, himself.

There had been a completion to those days, a safety, a contentment. Even with all his rules, his temper, his bullheaded stubbornness, the world had been a better place when Malcolm Hawke had still been in it. The weight of trying to fill his role had always been crushing.

The boy of twelve that Hawke had once been would have kissed his mother goodbye before he left. Hawke would remember the taste of the powder she wore on her cheek, the smell of her hair.

“The Qunari Arishok asked for me by name,” Hawke told her, because once, a long time ago, it had been nothing for him to tell her about his life.

Leandra grimaced. “Nasty beasts,” she said. “Do you remember the one we had through Lothering? Slaughtered that entire family, children and all, the brute. That reminds me, I should write to Miriam…”

Hawke left without kissing his mother goodbye, and he fed his scraps to Flower on the way out.

\--

Hawke made his way alone to Lowtown, and bought breakfast at the Hanged Man only to then find that he lacked any interest in eating it. Anders looked surprised and suspicious when he arrived to be offered an untouched plate.

“This really has lost all subtlety, Hawke,” he said. “I’m going to start feeling like a charity case.”

“If you don’t want it…”

“No, I’ll take it. It’s flattering that you care.”

There were almost no other patrons in the bar, not because of the actual hour, but because of the eventful evening the Hanged Man had evidentially seen the night before, wherein the crews of three separate raider ships had had an impromptu reunion. The girls were still replacing bloodied sawdust, raking out barrels of fresh over the bar’s scarred up floors.

Isabela was still drunk from the night’s festivities, and sporting an impressive black eye. Varric said that the only reason she hadn’t been thrown out with the others was his offer to babysit her.

“She’s in time out,” he explained.

“Oh, Isabela,” Hawke said. She waved in what was vaguely his direction without lifting her head from the table.

“Don’t…you’re no fun…sheep blanket…father…”

Hawke looked to Varric for a translation, but the dwarf merely shook his head.

“Consider her unavailable for our meeting this afternoon.”

“There was sooo much rum,” she groaned.

Hawke ordered a pot of tea for the table, and coffee for himself. Corff had taken to keeping the strong Antivan stuff in stock once Hawke had the coin to make it worth it. It was starting to catch on.

“We’re not meeting the Arishok until after lunch,” Hawke said, and Isabela waved him off with a _pffbbt_ noise, and Hawke let the matter rest. She had not exactly been his first choice for the excursion, but he had made the invitation as a kind of peace offering following a recent argument.

“I’m free,” Anders offered, and Hawke nodded, and poured himself more coffee.

He almost spilled it when Fenris walked in the door.

Fenris kept his gear in good repair, replacing pieces as needed but never varying far from his usual dark tunic and armor. Hawke had, of course, seen him without the armor pieces before, in a variation of the very tunic and leggings he now sported. There was absolutely nothing special or unusual about his attire, save that it seemed new – the dye dark and fresh, no patches or mending or fraying edges.

But he had tried to tidy up for Chantry services. He had even brushed his hair back out of his face, and he wasn’t wearing his sword, though Hawke had no doubt there were other weapons secreted away on him. Hawke could see that he had made effort, and he could see that he felt self-conscious about it, and that it had to take some large measure of trust for him to go anywhere without armor and sword, and his heart had a strange reaction to all three.

Fenris frowned at him in greeting. “Did you change your mind?” he asked.

“I’ll change after breakfast,” Hawke promised. “I had to get out of the house.” He poured Fenris a cup of coffee as the elf sat.

Fenris’s brows rose in immediate understanding. “My apologies,” he said. He accepted the mug Hawke handed him.

“I thought you had plans with your mom this morning,” Anders said. “If there’s a job…”

“Sebastian blackmailed me into attending Chantry service,” Fenris informed him dryly. “Since Hawke has also been obligated to such a task, I suggested we serve out our sentences together.

Anders’s face went pale and blank. “I don’t go into the Chantry anymore.”

“Fortunate, then, that you were not invited.”

“Let’s play nice this morning, please,” Varric said. When he scratched his nose, he left a streak of ink very similar to the scar across Hawke’s. He gestured broadly at the mess all around. “There’s been enough excitement around here today.”

The Look he gave Isabela had her dissolving into giggles. She rose in a way that bespoke a swaying room, and held onto the table as she made her way to Fenris, only to ‘fall’ into his lap in an exaggerated ‘accident’ when she was close enough.

“Hello,” Fenris said dryly. “This is not your seat.”

She made to poke at one of the lyrium dots on his forehead, but he pulled back.

“Sometimes I wonder what you taste like,” she said.

“Yes, naturally. Back to your chair now, please.”

She protested, but she was too unsteady, and Fenris too strong. Hawke examined Isabela’s mug as Fenris extracted the drunken raider back to her chair.

“This isn’t tea,” Hawke told Varric, who immediately threw down his pen in vexation.

“Maker’s breath, that’s the _third_ time she’s managed to switch them out!” he said. He gestured for Hawke to hand him the cup, and sniffed its contents before waving one of the waitresses over to take it. Safely back in her chair, Isabela pillowed her head atop her arms and fell silent again with a little groan.

Hawke refilled his mug with the last of the coffee, and pushed it Isabela’s way.

\--

Leandra raised a brow when Hawke came home with Fenris in tow, but she didn’t say anything, at least in Hawke’s hearing. He was forced to leave the two alone for a short time while he made himself presentable for the Maker.

“She was very pleasant,” Fenris assured him later, as they sat in the Amell family pew waiting for services to start. They were alone for the moment – the moment their guest started raising eyebrows across Hightown’s elite, Leandra had flitted off to do damage control. “She is always kind to me.”

“It’s a good thing we aren’t courting,” Hawke said. “She’d feel obligated to adopt you. Once you’re family, there’s no longer any need to be polite.”

“Hmm,” Fenris said. He toyed with the pamphlet he’d been given without reading it. It felt strange to be there with Fenris for legitimate purposes. No breaking and entering in the dead of night, no street gangs lying in wait, no corrupt sisters shuffling contraband. Just haughty Hightowners, staring and whispering, and the bright colored lights shining through the stained-glass windows making rainbows in Fenris’s hair.

Perhaps it was because of the places his mind had wandered that morning, but Hawke found himself wondering what it would have been like to bring Fenris to Lothering’s Chantry. What it might have been like to introduce him to his father, or to Bethany. Services always made him a little nostalgic for better times, for simpler times. Before death and desperation and Blight had made him…whatever it was he was now. Not a good man, not anymore. Not anything his father would have approved of.

Hawke believed in the Maker in a kind of abstract, peripheral kind of way. In Lothering, he’d only attended services on holidays or under duress. Bethany had been the one with all the faith. Hawke had only started attending regularly after they’d reached Kirkwall – because the services brought his mother peace when she was grieving. Because maybe it would appease Bethany’s spirit to see him there, even as he let his own soul grow darker.

The clatter of armor announced the arrival of the templars, filing into their reserved section. Hawke kept his eyes forward, and he did not look for his brother. He had no desire to face another person he’d disappointed.

He wished he could have known Fenris when he’d been a better man.

“Danarius took me to services, once,” Fenris volunteered. Lightly, as if his words did not matter. “He wanted to embarrass his wife, and it worked. Of course, slaves had to wait in the chamber below the chapel. There were large vents so that we could hear the sermon, and it was cold. Perhaps that was due to my attire. I wonder how your southern services will differ. I confess, I don’t know what to expect.”

“Well. We probably don’t have slaves stashed in the basement.” Hawke’s voice held a hard edge, and Fenris looked at him with thoughtful speculation.

“I do imagine the acoustics up here will be much improved,” Fenris said. “As well as the company.”

If Hawke was a braver man, he might have tried to hold his hand.

\--

After, Leandra took an invitation to lunch with one of the noble families, and Hawke narrowly managed to slip away with Fenris before being made to suffer the same fate.

Hawke treated them to pork buns at a stall near the docks, and he tried not to fixate on the way the afternoon sun lit up Fenris’s hair like a halo, the way he licked grease from his long elegant fingers, the warm roll of his voice as he speculated on how Sebastian would manage to trick him further into the Maker’s good graces.

“Put in a good word for me while you’re there,” Hawke said, which made Fenris laugh, and Hawke wanted things he didn’t dare put a name to. His smile made his heart ache.

When Anders arrived, Hawke bought more buns. The healer made a show of refusing them at first, but they were almost gone by the time Varric arrived, still looking stressed and annoyed.

“Merrill showed up and got her to bed,” he said, before anyone could ask about his drunken charge. “How does this shit always seem to happen when I have a deadline?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have called this chapter "Hawke likes to feed people, and also has issues with his mom."


	5. Lowtown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is such a strange chapter. It did a lot of things I didn't expect it to. I hope it works out ok.
> 
> I'm trying not to do a full play-by-play of in-game content because it's the in-between stuff that's important here. Please let me know if it comes across too jumpy or like reading a summary.
> 
> The end of the chapter is based off an old drabble of mine, if any of it sounds familiar, though it took a few changes I didn't expect.

Hawke tried to keep his distance from the Qunari. He had done a few jobs for them over the years, when there hadn’t been a polite way to avoid it, but he tried to just let them be. After all, their presence in the city was still a controversial one. He’d come across more than a few extremists who wanted them all killed or run out. Hawke didn’t want any part of it. So long as they weren’t hurting anyone, he was content to ignore them.

He had met with the Arishok before, their interactions tense, but not negative. He had Fenris to thank for that; the elf’s knowledge and diplomacy smoothed ways that Hawke would have muddied up if left to his own devices. The Arishok had his own rules, his own honor. Thanks to Fenris, Hawke had managed to avoid stepping on either.

Still, as he approached the compound, it had been with a mixture of bewilderment and displeasure. He didn’t know why the Arishok would ask for him, and he didn’t like the idea of being pulled into a conflict that wasn’t his to meddle in. Hawke was trying to get _away_ from that sort of stuff. The jobs he and his friends worked were meant to help keep them safe and fed, and perhaps to lend a hand to the city of Kirkwall itself, still unstable even four years after the Blight had inundated it with a glut of refugees. Hawke would rather focus on things that helped people. He didn’t want anything to do with the city’s messy politics.

The way the Arishok frowned when he approached told him that the Qunari was just as displeased to have had to call for Hawke, as Hawke was to be called.

It was several minutes before the large Qunari spoke.

Hawke was considered a large man. Years of farm work and, later, battle, had left him with broad shoulders and large, well-defined muscles. People had been commenting on his size since puberty, and the sudden growth spurt that had, briefly, made him very popular among his peers in Lothering. In fact, using his size to his advantage had frequently helped Hawke to intimidate opponents, de-escalating a situation before it could get truly bad.

But before the Arishok, he felt puny.

“Serah Hawke,” the Qunari greeted at last, the flat gravel of his voice giving no warmth or pleasure at seeing him. He was a great mountain of a man, his grey skin only adding to the image. He wore his war paints, as he had every time Hawke had seen him.

Hawke puffed his chest out a little more, and lifted his chin. He didn’t know if the Arishok intentionally tried to use his size and might to intimidate, but he’d been using that trick himself for years. He wasn’t going to be cowed; the man had asked him here for a reason.

“Messere?” he answered.

\--

“I will say one thing, Hawke,” Varric said, checking Bianca’s settings and smoothing a thumb over a shallow scratch she had gotten. “You drag us to the shittiest of shitholes.”

“You’re welcome,” Hawke grunted.

The Arishok’s summons had been a “courtesy” – a warning about poison that had been stolen from his people. Poison that had been set out as a decoy and allowed to be stolen, yes, but that was the thing about Qunari logic. Digging in too deep would only frustrate him.

Javaris Tintop had been, in the Arishok’s mind, the only likely suspect. Three years ago the dwarf had caused quite a bit of trouble trying to get his hands on Qunari explosives – and Varric had been able to confirm that the little weasel had recently and quickly sold off all his holdings and fled town.

“I do not hope you die,” the Arishok had said in parting, which might have been meant as a compliment? Hawke wasn’t certain – and he was too annoyed to think too much about it. Their quest for the thief had led them to Darktown, and from there to a series of coterie-infested caverns that led out onto the Wounded Coast and, ultimately, to Tintop who turned out to be…completely innocent. Well. Innocent of this affair, at the very least.

“Look,” Tintop had said, “I’m minding my own business, same old, and out of the blue some elf tries to kill me. Says she’s got the Qunari powder, and I’m her cover. I slipped her, hired some bodyguards, and ran for it. And now you’re here. Great.” Tiptop was an oily sneak and an opportunistic bastard, but Hawke was sure if he had really had anything to do with the theft he would have groveled a bit more when questioned. “I just want to get out,” Tintop had said. “With my dead guards. Thanks for that.”

Hawke let him go.

Tintop had said that the elf would be found in Lowtown. The trouble with that was, they were already out on the coast, having trudged through miles of spider-infested cavern to get here, and the sun was going down.

It was full-on dark by the time they got back to Kirkwall, Hawke’s entire afternoon wasted chasing the wrong lead, and now…

They found the thief, but it had almost been too late. She had already released the poison into the streets, and it had been allowed to stay there long enough to take its effect, not only on her own men, but on many of the innocent civilians in the nearby apartments.

“Qunari take my people!” the thief had screamed at him. “My siblings forget their culture, then go to the Qun for purpose. We’re losing them twice!”

And now there were innocents dead in Lowtown’s streets.

He stared at the elf’s body, as the city guard moved around him, helping the survivors clear out of their homes. They would need to stay somewhere else until they could be sure all of the poison had dissipated. Some of them had lost their minds under the effects of the poison, lashing out at each other. The guard would take care of the bodies.

And with the thief herself dead, Hawke was out of leads. He had nothing more than her word that one of “his people” had helped her. Someone who wanted the Qunari out of the city, someone who wanted to enrage Kirkwall’s populace, force them to action.

Hawke rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“Hawke.”

Hawke could feel Fenris’s keen gaze even before he looked up. It didn’t surprise him to know he had noticed. What did surprise him was the elf’s raised hand, as if he had been on the verge of reaching for him.

Fenris let his hand drop. He didn’t ask if Hawke was okay. They held one another’s gaze for a long moment.

Varric cleared his throat. He said, “Let’s go get a drink.”

\--

Anders had been fussing over him since they got to the Hanged Man, taking Hawke’s head in his hands to heal a deep cut across his forehead, taking the excuse to claim the seat beside him, to push it a little nearer than necessary as he looked him over for further injury. “We don’t know what other kinds of effects that poison can have on the body,” he said. “You were in it longer than any of us. Let me put my mind at ease, all right?”

Hawke allowed it. Fenris knew that the man was too tired to argue. He could see it in the heaviness in his shoulders, in the way he said so little. It was clear when Hawke was at his limits. What wasn’t clear was how anyone else missed it.

“Dinner and drinks,” Varric announced, as he returned from the bar. “Both are on their way, you can thank me later. Anyone up for cards?”

“Just like that?” Anders asked.

“I don’t like to end the day on such a heavy note.” Varric had already taken his deck out. He gestured with it, looking to Hawke for approval. “What do you say, big guy?”

Fenris watched Hawke shift, watched him, after a moment, rally himself. Three years ago he wouldn’t have been able to do that, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to. But Fenris watched him put something of himself back together, and straighten in his seat, and nod.

“All right, dwarf,” he said. “If you really feel like losing some coin.”

There was no heart in his words, but he made the attempt, anyway.

By the time the food came, Isabella had swept in from her room, fresh from sleeping off last night’s binge all afternoon. Aveline arrived at almost the same time, and looked at the raider with disbelief evident in her eyes. She had been there when the guard had finally broken things up the night before. She knew how deep in her drinks Isabela had been.

“If you were anyone else, you’d be dead after drinking that much,” Aveline said.

“That’s what makes me so fun,” Isabela answered. She patted her lap, spreading her legs a little. “Need a seat, big girl?”

Aveline made a noise of annoyance, and took her usual chair. “Hawke,” she said. “Please tell me what the bloody hell I cleaned up down the block?”

“Let him fill you in later,” Fenris said, and she sat back frowning, but didn’t press the matter.

Anders lost the first game of Wicked Grace, and had to get up to place the order for their next round of drinks as punishment. While he was gone, Fenris stole his chair. It was petty and pointless, but he didn’t want his back to the door if he was going to be drinking any more than he’d already had, that was the pure and simple fact of it. It wasn’t a matter of jealousy, or because he liked Hawke’s warmth beside him, or even because sometimes when Hawke drank, he put his hand on Fenris’s thigh under the table, and Fenris didn’t want to miss that tonight.

Hawke was feeling better after some dinner and a drink and some time with his friends. He gave Fenris a grin when he sat, and Fenris’s heart did something funny, which he promptly ignored. He was accustomed to the strange impulses the man brought out in him. Hawke had a way of making him feel things he never would have thought it possible to feel. He liked being close to him. He liked when Hawke touched him. Sometimes he wondered –

 _“We could be more,”_ Hawke had offered, once, the night of the anniversary of Fenris’s escape, his handsome face earnest and open in the flickering firelight, his voice low and warm. _“We could find out.”_

Sometimes Fenris regretted that he hadn’t been brave enough to take him up on the offer.

Particularly on nights like this, when Hawke shifted a little closer, and he looked at Fenris in that way that he looked at him, and he said, “Why, there you are.”

“You seem to be in a better mood now,” Fenris observed.

Hawke’s brows knit. Fenris knew he would apologize for his temper – as if Fenris didn’t know how absolute his control over it was. As if Fenris hadn’t been there to witness just how exhausted he was, how trying the last few days had been for him.

He reached for Hawke’s drink, and drained the last of it. Then he put his hand on Hawke’s thigh.

“This morning, Isabela wondered what I tasted like,” Fenris said, conversationally. “Do you ever wonder that, Hawke?”

Hawke’s lips parted. He looked utterly flabbergasted by the question. Feeling brave, Fenris made himself hold his gaze.

Anders slammed the new pitcher of ale on the table, breaking the moment, and Fenris lost his nerve. As the healer, glaring, threw himself into the chair Fenris had vacated, Fenris took his hand from Hawke’s thigh, and poured them fresh drinks.

\--

Fenris might have had a little more than he’d meant to.

An occasional glass of wine when his thoughts turned too dark to face without assistance, a few fingers of whiskey late at night in Hawke’s study, or even a few mugs of ale with his friends were one thing. Fenris did not drink heavily when he drank. Not on purpose. Not as a habit. Not as a rule.

On the run, or when he had first come to Kirkwall, it had been a matter of safety. After he had come to know Hawke… he trusted the man implicitly. He had no doubt that he was safe at his side, whatever state he was in, whatever may come. But he didn’t like the feeling that he wasn’t in control of himself.

Tonight, the world was blurry, and Fenris could not walk a straight line, and Hawke’s arms were around him, supporting him, and all he could think about was the fact that he had never _wanted_ someone’s hands on his body before.

It was late, and the night around them was dark and satiny and filled with stars. Fenris felt warm and fuzzy, safe, and all the things that haunted him seemed so far away, insignificant, powerless. Fenris couldn’t stop thinking about Hawke’s hands, and arms, and his _mouth._

“I think I should spend the night,” Hawke told him. “I don’t want to leave you alone like this.”

“Abs’lutely you should not leave me,” Fenris informed him solemnly. Hawke chuckled.

“Here,” Hawke said, and he helped him lean against a column outside his stolen estate. “Let me get the door unlocked. Am I going to have to carry you up the stairs?”

Fenris didn’t answer. He tilted his head. It was dark, but he liked the way Hawke’s big shoulders pulled at his shirt. He liked his shoulders. He liked his little waist, and his ass, and his muscular thighs, too, liked how big he was, how his size could be just a little bit intimidating, but he wasn’t, really, he was nice. Fenris had never met someone so kind. Danarius was a small man, scrawny, with greedy knobbly hands and pathetic skinny calves and a droopy backside. Maybe kindness was stored in the muscles.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Hawke cautioned, turning to catch him as he slumped, and Fenris roused himself enough to frown at him.

Hawke helped him into the house. He wasn’t really sure how he got up the stairs, because the next thing he knew he was in bed.

“There’s a bucket right here,” Hawke told him. “In case you need to be sick. I’m going to be right outside if you need anything. All right?”

“No,” Fenris told him, frowning.

Hawke’s blurry face frowned back. “No? Do you need something else?”

Fenris tried to rouse himself. Tried to put back together the fragments of the thoughts that had led him to drink so much, the decision he had made. Hawke needed to know. He tried to sit up, so Hawke would know it was important. Failing that, he grasped hold of his shirt.

“Hawke,” he said, glaring, utterly serious. “I think you should kiss me.”

Hawke paused for only a moment before he smiled. He brushed Fenris’s hair back from his face with one big hand, and he leaned in. Fenris closed his eyes.

Hawke’s lips brushed his forehead, leaving the trio of lyrium dots tingling.

“Ask me again when you’re sober enough to mean it,” Hawke said.


	6. Tea Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alcohol and food. That's all this fic is about.

“What are you doing here?”

After a night spent struggling to get comfortable propped up against the bedroom door, Hawke was awoken from the sleep he had finally managed to find when his head bounced off the floor after said door was opened and he fell into the room.

It probably looked comical, but fortunately the elf who stood, stone-faced, above him wasn’t laughing. Hawke estimated that he could add another two hours to his weekly sleep tally, bringing him nearly to six. For Hawke, this early in the week, that wasn’t half bad.

Hawke sat up slowly, rubbing the knot he could already feel forming on the back of his skull. “We did agree that I would stay,” he said.

Fenris’s expression didn’t change. Hawke frowned right back at him, desperate not to think about how endearing he found him with his clothes all wrinkled and his hair at all angles from sleep. Maker, his head hurt. “What if last night had been the night Danarius came for you?” Hawke pointed out. “I wasn’t going to leave you vulnerable. I tried not to make my presence too intrusive.”

Fenris’s lips thinned, and his glare sharpened.

“I’ll make breakfast,” Fenris said, and he stepped over Hawke. Hawke watched him make his retreat down the stairs with all the dignity of an offended cat who’d just taken an unexpected dip in the lake, and he wondered at what kind of monster of a hangover the elf had.

Hawke gave himself a moment to visit the privy and splash his face with water before he headed downstairs to join Fenris. The reflection that met his eyes in the broken scrap of mirror above the washbasin looked haggard. He tried without success to finger-comb his beard into some kind of submission. He must have slept with his cheek pressed inelegantly against the door; an angry red circle covered half his face.

When Hawke finally made his way down to the kitchens, he found Fenris standing as if lost in the middle of the room, a dented frying pan hanging limp in one hand, a filthy spatula in the other. The entire space was a mess, plates stacked on the counters, congealed food scraps in the sink. A basket on the counter held a single, broken egg.

Hawke said, “Why don’t I take you out, instead?”

“I didn’t realize I had let it get bad again,” Fenris sounded truly startled. Hawke took the frying pan from him.

“You can buy the coffee,” Hawke said.

\--

The little Hightown bakery was a place they had discovered together years ago. They went at least once a week, sometimes more. Even before he’d gotten back his family’s estate, the owner and workers had never batted an eye at the scruffy Ferelden refugee and his prickly elf companion who came all the way to Hightown for pastries once or twice a week. Hawke appreciated that. Fenris appreciated the apple tarts. He said that he hadn’t even been aware that he liked sweets, before they’d found their bakery.

They were each on their second serving of coffee before either of them really felt like talking.

“Did you even think about looking for a blanket?” Fenris asked, finally finding his amusement for the situation. “It must have been terribly uncomfortable.”

“It was fine.”

“I’ve slept in doorways before, Hawke.”

“All right,” he relented. “I’ll admit it wasn’t quite what I had in mind for the first night we spent together.”

“What _did_ you have in mind?” Fenris asked. “For the first night we spent together?”

Fenris could only maintain his bold, direct gaze for a few seconds, not long enough for Hawke to think up an answer that wouldn’t leave them both embarrassed.

Hawke almost reached for him. He almost turned his chin back toward himself, almost leaned across the table to take the elf up on the offer of a kiss Fenris probably didn’t even remember making. He almost let himself wonder if he would taste cinnamon-y, sweet from the apple tarts, or rich and bitter like the coffee, or even cold and electric and tingly, like lyrium.

_Isabela wondered what I taste like. Do you ever wonder that, Hawke?_

Hawke let his hand drop without reaching for him.

\--

Hawke had a standing lunch date with Merrill twice a month. He wasn’t really sure which of them had started it, whether it had been Merrill’s loneliness in the city that let her to keep inviting him, or Hawke’s need to keep an eye on the chipper little blood mage he’d found himself taking responsibility for, but the appointment persisted, even after three years.

Merrill had gotten ahold of a pretty little tea set with white and yellow flowers painted on it, and an old lace tablecloth she knew how to fold _just so_ to hide the worst of its stains. She provided the tea, hand foraged when they were out at Sundermount, or stealthily snipped from the garden’s of Hightown’s elite. Hawke provided the food.

“Oh, but you should see how handsome he is, all polished up in his armor!”

Hawke would admit, if pressed, that news about his brother was another benefit of these meetings. He would also admit that he was happy that Carver had found himself someone who loved him the way that Merrill did. He still frowned.

“Merrill,” Hawke said. “How many times do I have to tell you not to sneak into the templars’ training grounds?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to wind up there, did I?” she reached across the table to pour him more tea. The dainty teacup was tiny in Hawke’s hands. “I was looking for the cobbler and I got lost again. Not my fault Kirkwall is such a maze.”

“You don’t wear shoes,” Hawke pointed out. “And the Gallows is on an island.”

“You’re such a worrywart,” she said. “Don’t think you’ve fooled me, hiding them under that bun. Eat your veggies or there’ll be no dessert.”

Hawke sighed, and he picked up his fork.

\--

“I’ve got something to show you,” Merrill said, after dessert. She pushed back her chair. Hawke could see that she was excited. “Come and see.”

“Please tell me that you didn’t adopt something cute and fuzzy,” Hawke groaned. He got up, though, and followed when Merrill disappeared into her tidy little bedroom.

She stood, proudly, before the ugliest mirror Hawke had ever seen.

Its surface was dark, foggy, and there were cracks in the glass, the largest and longest directly down the center. The frame was gilded but badly tarnished, covered in scrolled carving, and something that might have been a halla coming out of the top. The bottom almost looked to be wrapped in thick roots. Merill turned back to him, beaming with pleasure.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked.

For a moment, something seemed to move across the surface of the glass – like creatures of the deep that swam beneath frozen ice. Hawke frowned. “Why are you showing me this, exactly?”

“It’s not just a mirror!” Merrill told him quickly. “I mean, it is a mirror. But it’s magic! Or it will be.”

Hawke could tell that. He could feel…something. It wasn’t quite the same as the way he could feel things pressed up against the Veil like children at a candy shop window in certain areas of the city, but it was similar enough to make his skin crawl. And she had it in her room, slept next to it every night. Hawke crossed his arms.

“I’ve spent the last few years restoring this,” Merrill told him as she turned back to the mirror. She reached out, and traced her fingertips along the glass lovingly, but when she spoke, there was sadness in her voice. “Two of my clan stumbled across it in a ruin. We never found Tamlen. And Mahariel came back…poisoned by the eluvian. Sick, just from being near it.”

That didn’t surprise him. Hawke’s voice came out colder than he meant it to. He asked, “What are you trying to do with this mirror?”

Merrill didn’t look at him. “At first, I wanted to find out what had happened to my friends,” she said. “Maybe I could still help them. I suppose the great Hero of Ferelden doesn’t need my help now. Anyway, I know I can use it to help my people recover what we’ve lost.”

“This thing is what made your Keeper send you away, isn’t it?” Hawke realized. Merrill looked up quickly, and there was guilt in her eyes, but also something fierce, and angry, and defiant.

“The Keeper wanted me to destroy the fragment I kept. She said our ancestors meant it to be forgotten. But it’s a Keeper’s place to remember! Even the dangerous things.” Merrill stopped herself. Took a breath. Her arms were crossed now too, as if to protect herself. She lowered her voice. “We argued,” she said. “I…left.”

Hawke shook his head. “Merrill,” he began. He tried to be gentle.

“She’s wrong!” Merrill said. “This mirror could teach us so much about who we once were! Hawke - !”

“Did your clan member recover?” Hawke asked.

Merrill visibly deflated, then rallied herself. “She had the Blight corruption, the Keeper said,” she admitted. “Marethari’s magic was keeping it at bay, but not forever. A Grey Warden took her away. He promised they could cure her. I suppose they must have, if she was able to lead the armies that slew the Archdemon.”

But the other one, she had said, hadn’t been so lucky. Tamlen. Hawke rubbed the bridge of his nose. He tried, very hard, to keep his voice even, to be patient, to understand Merrill’s point of view. Restoring something this ancient and complex was a work of brilliance. She had every right to be proud. Of course she was excited about recovering some of her people’s history. But –

“This thing may have killed someone, and you brought it here.”

“It’s not dangerous, I promise!” she said, hurrying to him, grabbing his hands. She looked up at him, pleading for him to understand. “I fixed it,” she said. “Or tried to. With. With blood magic.”

Hawke drew his hands away quickly, ice forming in his belly at the mention of blood magic. At the reminder that she still practiced it, that he allowed her to, because she was brilliant, and talented, and meant well. He barely heard her reassurance that the mirror could not hurt anyone. Hawke hadn’t been able to bring himself to turn her over to the Circle, telling himself that he would watch her, that he would take responsibility for any harm she caused, as he had already taken responsibility for Anders. Three years, and she hadn’t lost control, hadn’t hurt anyone she hadn’t already meant to hurt. While Hawke in his arrogance let a blood mage walk free, let her bring this thing here, pour her heart and soul into its restoration.

“It doesn’t work,” Merrill admitted softly. “I’ve tried everything. I think it needs to be finished with a special tool – an _arulin’holm_. My clan has one. It’s been in their hands for generations…”

“Go talk to the Keeper, then,” Hawke said, harshly, and she flinched back. There was no way to explain that he was just as angry with himself as he was with her. Merrill showed him this because she _trusted_ him. Because she thought he would want to _help_ her with it. His father would never have let this situation form, would never have let her continue on like this, and Hawke had turned a blind eye to it, because he liked her. Because his brother loved her. He started to head for the door.

“I can’t – I just can’t!” Merrill ran forward, and she caught his arm. Hawke refused to look at her. “You have no idea,” she pled. “The Keeper…I _can’t_ talk to her. We fight, or talk circles around each other. She has a disappointed frown that turns your bones to jelly – it’s even worse than yours!” she tugged on his arm, and tried to smile for him, tried to make him smile. When he didn’t answer, her voice got smaller. “Please, please help me? You will, won’t you?”

Hawke didn’t answer. His jaw ached, from how tightly he held it clenched. Merrill was his friend. He cared a great deal for her. But she had been doing this behind his back, knowing the risk she put on herself, on him, on those around her. Knowing that he would hold himself responsible for whoever she hurt, knowing it was dangerous, knowing –

What would she do, he wondered, if continued left to her own devices?

“I’ll go with you,” Hawke said.


	7. Sabrae

Merrill greeted them all with far more cheer an exuberance than the hour or the occasion called for. She said she had packed them a picnic lunch.

A journey up Sundermount to the place Merrill’s clan had planted themselves was no easy feat. It meant an early start, hours of challenging hiking, and a very real possibility of spending the night camped outside, depending on how long their tasks took to complete. Moreover, the clan not only refused to offer them shelter, but insisted that Merrill be at least five miles away from their territory before she put down a tent. The journey was an ordeal, even before one took into consideration the wildlife, the temperamental weather, or the odd demon infestation so easy to stumble on amid the ruins that dotted the mountain paths.

Hawke wouldn’t have been in a good mood, even if he hadn’t felt so conflicted about their purpose.

“Oh, but it’s it just a _beautiful_ day!” Merrill said, swinging her lunch basket, her steps light as they crossed through Kirkwall’s gates, past the lines of carts and horses waiting to get into the city. Farmers and travelers alike stretched for nearly two miles waiting to get past the guards at the gate. Hawke was only momentarily confused about the hold up to enter the city, until he remembered Aveline and Anders both complaining, separately, that Meredith had pushed her nose into the guards’ business again, and was insisting that anyone entering or exiting the city be thoroughly searched for signs they were smuggling anything that would help the mage resistance. Had it not been so early, and had they had a cart with them, Hawke’s party likely would have been searched as well – as it was, few were trying to leave the city right now, and the men on duty were too overwhelmed trying to get the entrance line moving to pay them much heed.

It was unclear whether the day would prove to be a beautiful one or not. The sun had only just risen, and this close to the city the smoke from the foundry still polluted the skyline, but it seemed overcast and grey to Hawke, the wind threateningly heavy, and it would be just _perfect_ if it decided to rain on them while they were about this nonsense.

“Why you indulge her at all is beyond me,” Fenris had said, when Hawke had asked – no, really, practically begged – him to come along on the excursion. He had sounded bored and unimpressed with the idea, but he hadn’t said no, even though being around the Dalish was a challenge to the former slave, who admitted to Hawke he found his feelings regarding them _complex_. “I feel drawn to them, and I envy them,” he had admitted to Hawke once, one late night, the pop of the fire and the aroma of bourbon their only companions. “At the same time, I find them contemptable.” He hadn’t explained further, but Hawke had not forgotten. He hadn’t thought he really needed more of an explanation. Fenris’s past meant that he was utterly divorced from the history and culture that should have belonged to him, and the Dalish’s insular ways meant that would never change. Even in the case of a clan like Sabrae, willing to take in the odd city elf who fled their way, Fenris never would have found a place. He had experienced too much to put his own beliefs aside and conform to Dalish ways. He would never have a connection to his people; it was best not to waste time wishing otherwise.

What mattered was that he had agreed to come, even as he looked, cool-eyed, at Merrill’s exuberance. Over her head, he gave Hawke a Look that had him shaking his head and fighting a smile, despite his grim mood.

He knew Merrill’s excitement would not last, and he knew he would be the source of her dampened spirits. That was never a fun position to be in. The truth was, Hawke intended to have a very thorough, very stern conversation with Merethari on their arrival, and he knew Merrill would not be pleased, just as he knew she had left him little alternative. He did not like the business of the mirror, the wrongness of it – and he didn’t feel he could trust his friend to be honest about what she knew. Merrill was good at brushing over other people’s concerns when she wanted to be. Feigning ignorance or misunderstanding or innocence. The mirror had killed people; the matter couldn’t be as simple as she made it seem.

It was… it felt like a betrayal. That was the difficult part. Agreeing to help, to take on the difficulty of the journey, just to undermine her when they got there.

“I’ve never seen a man look so green in the presence of fresh air,” Sebastian said casually, as they followed the path along the coast. Fenris had invited him; somehow the two had already become something like friends. Hawke himself was still on the fence on his opinion of the prince who had come to join their murderous little club, but he was glad for the intrusion on his thoughts.

“I’m – tired,” Hawke said, which was true, in a very many ways. Tired of his rules, his principles, of being the one to spoil things. Tired of Mother’s expectations, and Carver’s anger, and Anders’s disappointment. Tired of reeling Isabela back from her good time, tired of babysitting Merill’s blood magic. Tired of trying to save his friends from their own decisions.

“You’re carrying most of the weight,” Sebastian agreed, and Hawke gave a little startle, until he realized the prince was nodding toward the packs on his back. Hawke had taken custody of most of the camping equipment they’d needed to bring with them.

“I can take it,” Hawke said, which was always his justification.

“Without a doubt you can,” Sebastian agreed with a smile. “But there’s no shame in disbursing the weight a little more evenly, now is there?”

Ahead of them, Merrill and Fenris were bickering, quietly.

“ – step on something sharp, Fenris?”

“No.”

“Slam your fingers in a door?”

“No.”

“Smack your head on a low beam?”

“Is there a point to this line of questioning?”

Hawke sighed. He reached up, unclipped a frying pan from the pack, and offered it, with utter seriousness, Sebastian’s way. The other man looked at him for a moment, before he laughed, and he took it.

“All right Hawke,” Sebastian said. “Little by little is still better than naught.”

\--

The sights and sounds and smells of a Dalish camp were far from familiar to Hawke, who had visited only a handful of times over the span of years since he had taken on responsibility for Merrill, but he could see how she grew stiff and uncomfortable and quiet, the closer they approached the bright red sails on the horizon, her joyful mood dampening by increasing degrees as they drew near. He wondered to himself if the aroma of Dalish cookpots wafting to them on the breeze made her ache for home the way sometimes some of the food stalls run by Ferelden refugees did him. Merrill had chosen to leave her people, but her decisions were still made with them in her heart.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the camp, and the overcast sky seemed heavy with the promise of rain. Hawke was resigned to the fact that they would be spending the night on the mountain.

“Keeper,” Merrill said, when Marethari came to greet them, and he could hear so much in her voice of the closeness they had once held, the pain of their disagreement.

“You return to us, _da’len_ ,” the Keeper said, a little chilly, a little hopeful, and Hawke found himself thinking of his mother, when she was displeased with him, and wanted the matter to be settled, but was unwilling to give ground on it. Marethari was a dignified, elegant woman, holding herself with the pride the Dalish had, not the bent shoulders and hungry eyes of the city elves Hawke was used to. Even in the limited sunlight of the day, the gold in her _vallaslin_ flashed like a noblewoman’s jewels. “Have you reconsidered this path at last?”

Merrill was tight and tense and – _afraid_ , Hawke thought, and he found the annoyance he’d been brewing toward her all day had suddenly gone. He was tired, and she had given up her home.

“Go on,” Hawke heard himself say, and watched something in her loosen, and felt little utter scum for the surprise that flickered in her eyes when he said, “I’m with you.”

“Thank you, Hawke,” she said, as if it had been the last thing she expected to hear from him, his friend of three years, the woman his brother loved. He watched her roll her shoulders, watched her hold herself a little more confidently, and he felt utterly despicable. “Keeper, I need the _arulin’holm_ ,” she said.

\--

Merrill invoked something called _sulvevanan_ , the right to perform a service to the clan in exchange for temporary ownership of a historical relic, and Hawke, aside from a few questions for clarification, kept his mouth shut. He didn’t barrage Marethari with his questions about the mirror, about the youths who had been killed, the danger that had prompted her to shun the girl who clearly meant so much to her.

He said, “We appreciate your help. This means a lot to Merrill,” and watched the worry and despair flicker across the Keeper’s face, even as Merrill looked at him with wonder and excitement, bolstered by the support that, to his shame, he knew she hadn’t expected. Support that, in truth, he still did not believe he should give.

“You will let her kill herself for this foolishness, then?” Fenris asked, low, as they walked away, and Hawke didn’t answer, didn’t know how he could. “Are her feelings more important than her safety?” he hissed, and when Hawke didn’t answer him again, he caught his hand, briefly, and released it just as quickly.

The Dalish allowed them to leave their packs in the camp, under the watchful eye of Master Ilen, the craftsman, who, while not exactly welcoming, was generally less hostile to the outsiders than the rest of Merrill’s clan. They were to hunt a creature known as a _varterral,_ which had recently killed three hunters, and Hawke did not want to risk anything that might impede his ability to fight.

In the cavern that held the beast, they came upon another elf, a green-eyed blond youth who lacked both the _vallaslin_ markers, and the typical Dalish accent – a city elf the clan had taken in sometime before their flight from Fereldan.

“ _Aneth ara,_ Pol,” Merrill said. “Are you hurt?” she was already reaching for the little pouch of herbs she kept on her, when he stumbled back as if she had drawn a weapon, fear suddenly filling his face.

“Stay back!” he said. “What do you want from me?”

“Pol, what’s wrong? I’m here to help!”

“S-stay back! Don’t touch me!”

“Be calm, Pol,” Hawke said, his voice hard and stern, despite his best efforts. “We’ll help get you back to the camp.”

The elf thrust an accusing finger Merrill’s way, falling back again as she tried to take a step toward him. “You don’t know what she is!” he said. “What she’s done!” Merrill made a move, again, as if to approach him, and he turned and fled with a plea to the Creators to help him.

Hawke felt ice down his spine, the sickening uncertainty about their task here mingling with the blatant fear in the lad’s face when he saw Merrill. He fixed his eyes on her, but she was already taking off after him. “We have to catch him!” Merrill cried. “Hurry!”

\--

They pursued Pol through the twisting labyrinth of tunnels, and in the end it was all for naught. The young man threw himself carelessly forward, and in his desperation to escape Merrill, found himself in the _varterral’s_ path. By the time the creature was slain, it was too late for him. Even if Anders had been with them, Hawke thought that there would have been no chance to save his life.

“I’m sorry, Merrill,” Hawke said, something cold and hard settling within him, even as she bent herself over her fallen clanmate, tiny body wracked with sobs, a pain that cut, sharp, against the stone in Hawke’s belly, the surety, now, that he should have known better than to let her come here.

“He was more afraid of me than the _varterral_ ,” Merrill said.

“Is that really so surprising?” Fenris countered.

\--

They had found the remains of the other hunters in the caverns, decaying, torn to shreds, little enough left of them for retrieval but their clan amulets. But Hawke, in silence, jaw set, gathered up Pol’s body, and carried it back with them to the camp, the elf’s blood cooling rapidly as it soaked into his shirt, the burden growing heavier with each step he took.

“The eluvian is poison,” Marethari said later, when they had returned. Hawke’s arms had shaken as he laid Pol out on Ilen’s work bench, but Merrill, intent on confronting her Keeper, barely looked that way. “It killed Tamlen. It stole Mahariel. It led you to blood magic. Will you let it twist you further from who you are?”

Hawke’s ears were ringing. He barely listened to their argument as he stared at the fallen youth, cold from the blood that drenched his shirt. It still had not rained. Vaguely, he was aware of Fenris at his side, of Sebastian, somewhere nearby quietly offering to say Andrastian funerary rites, _just in case_.

“Hawke,” Marethari said, and he blinked at the sound of his name, the feel of the artifact as it was pressed into his hands. “Because Merill won’t listen, I give this heirloom of my clan to you for safekeeping. Please…don’t let her do this.”

Marethari looked frightened, pleading. Merrill looked furious, but triumphant.

“Thank the Creators!” she said. “I thought maybe she’d go back on her word.”

Hawke closed his fingers, slowly, around the piece. His voice sounded hard, and far away, when he spoke.

“Is it worth restoring this mirror if it turns your clan against you?”

“You know what it’s like to lose everything, Hawke,” she said. There was more, but Hawke hardly heard her, the weight of the artifact in his hand like the weight of her clanmember’s body, the weight of the responsibility in Marethari’s eyes. The love, the fear.

“What did the Keeper mean, the mirror _led_ you to blood magic?” Hawke asked.

“I…” Merrill’s eyes were huge, suddenly. Sudden spike of fear, of guilt, of – “The shard I picked up was corrupted,” she said. “I couldn’t cleanse it without help, and the Keeper refused. She said it belonged to another time, and should be left there. So I…” Merrill flinched, and she turned to him, desperate, pleading. Her hands closed over his atop the artifact. “I found a spirit. It gave me the power to purify the mirror through blood magic.”

She knew. She knew how he felt about blood magic, about demons. She knew that he had taken responsibility for her, and she hadn’t told him. She had asked him to help her, _knowing_ –

“I’ve never heard of blood magic ‘purifying’ anything,” Hawke said, and he no longer felt distant, no. His anger was sharp enough to draw blood. Hot and cold at once.

“Neither have I,” Fenris murmured.

All eyes were on Merrill now, who shrunk back from him as if he had struck her. Her eyes lingered on the artifact he held as if she considered taking it from him, but in the end she crossed her arms tightly across her chest.

“There’s nothing inherently evil about blood magic. It’s magic, like any other. The power that contaminated the mirror was too strong to be driven out by normal means. I – if I had piles of lyrium lying about, I could have used that, but I didn’t. I used what I had!”

Hawke felt sick. He had defended Merrill. Supported her. Pushed past his better instincts, because she was brilliant, and he liked her, and his brother loved her. Because she was alone. He’d known she was a blood mage, yes, but knowing it wasn’t some difference in Dalish magical practices, knowing that it was that damned mirror that had started it -

He tried. He tried, so hard, to keep the fury from his voice. “The eluvian is ruining your life,” Hawke said. Slowly, thickly. “You don’t want to do this.”

“You – you’re siding with the Keeper?” she demanded. When Hawke didn’t answer, her face went scarlet with rage. “This is dangerous, yes, but it is restoring something vital to my people! I _know_ what I’m doing, Hawke. Give me the _arulin’holm._ ”

“I’m keeping it,” he said, and he felt like a bastard, and he felt like a fool. And it hurt, the betrayal in her eyes, the hurt, the fury. It shouldn’t have mattered. If he was doing the right thing, it shouldn’t have mattered, how upset she was, but he was, and it did. “I can’t let you do this,” he said.

\--

On the way up Sundermount, Hawke had carried Merrill’s pack. Had left her with her excitement and her joy and her home packed lunch so painstakingly put together for them.

On the way back, she grabbed her own pack, and would not walk with them, and would not talk to them. She made her camp away from theirs when they stopped for the night, and though Sebastian spent some time at her fire, trying to bring her ‘round, she would not relent.

“You know you are not wrong,” Fenris said, sitting at his side. He had called Merrill a monster to her face, even as she grieved.

“I don’t want to talk,” Hawke told him.

Fenris would not look at him, but he shook his head. “You are going to sit here and blame yourself when you did what needed to be done,” he said. “I have seen the results of the path she walks. The motive doesn’t matter. Advancement, greed, discovery. Blood magic may have many different starting points, but they all connect to the same path, and there is only one destination to which that path leads.”

“You shouldn’t have spoken to her the way you did.”

“Perhaps not,” Fenris didn’t sound bothered by it. “That I spoke at all indicates I care. She won’t change her ways by being petted and coddled. I want her to think about her actions.”

Hawke closed his eyes. “My father would tell me to give her to the templars.”

“You should,” Fenris said. “But you won’t.”

“Will you?”

“…no.”

“I’m responsible for this,” Hawke said. “I’ve let her continue on like this for three years. Anything she does… if it goes too far… _when_ it goes too far, it will be because I let it. Because I didn’t stop her when I should have. I know it, and I still – I _can’t_.”

“You have your father’s morals,” Fenris said, “But I think that he must not have had your heart. You care for your friends, deeply. Even when you do not want to.”

“Should I give it to you?” Hawke asked. “The _arulin’holm?”_

Fenris looked startled a moment, then shook his head. “I am not Dalish, either.” In the firelight, his hand covered Hawke’s. Hawke had not realized his hand was shaking, until Fenris’s fingers laced with his and it stopped. His jaw hurt from holding it clenched. He wanted to turn, to press his face to Fenris’s shoulder, to feel the comfort of a pair of arms around him.

He didn’t move.

“I am with you,” Fenris said.

Hawke could only nod.


	8. Interlude

“You know, so long as you pay upfront, the girls at the Rose don’t really care what you smell like,” Todric said. The templar was reclined back on a bunk that _wasn’t_ his, watching Carver get ready for his evening off with way more attention to detail than Carver would have preferred.

“I thought you had to sleep before tonight’s guard duty?” Carver said, dodging as Todric tossed a balled up pair of one of their neighbor’s socks at his head.

“Supposed to be, but that Maker-blasted smell is keeping me up,” Todric said.

“You don’t even live in this room.”

“I could smell it down the hall. The apprentices could smell it at the bottom of the tower. I think I even heard some of the Tranquil starting to grumble.”

“Har har.”

“Two questions: first, did they charge you coin for that? Because I’m pretty sure if you go to Darktown with your own bottle you can just scoop the swill out of the sewers. Second, did you really have to bathe in it?”

Carver resisted the urge to smell himself. He’d saved for months for the little bottle of expensive Orlesian cologne; it did _not_ smell like it came from Darktown. And he had _not_ used too much.

“Oh, no,” Todric groaned. “Not the pomade. What _is_ this?”

Carver paused, hands halfway to his hair, then, stubbornly, plunged them in, slicking it back.

“It’s my first full night off in a month, is what it is,” Carver said. He would not let Todric get under his skin. He wouldn’t. “And I’ve got a girl to see.”

“To _torture_?”

“Don’t wait up.”

Carver thought he looked very nice, and wouldn’t take any ribbing to the contrary. He had a new shirt and a second-hand embroidered vest from someone who was almost his size and who came from a very fashionable family. His pants he’d only worn half a dozen times, and he’d paid one of the kids in the stables to shine his boots for him. Leo may be the Hawke brother living high and mighty in the Amell mansion but damned if Carver didn’t feel like a real gentleman tonight.

“I don’t know any kind of decent lady who’d be willing to see you,” Todric grumbled, and sat up when Carver started heading for the door. “Wait,” he said. “Does she have any friends? Put in a good word for me, won’t you? I think my girl at the Rose gave me this rash…”

Carver shook his head, and didn’t answer – mostly because he wasn’t sure whether which was more terrifying to contemplate: the thought of making Todric privy to his brother’s group and their secrets, or the thought of inflicting Isabela on the man. He waved on his way out, and promised to tell Todric all the best bits when he got back.

It had been a stressful few weeks in the barracks, and Carver had been looking forward to his night off. Bringing in that mage underground cell had earned Carver a lot of attention – positive attention, but attention he didn’t necessarily want. It had meant some of the higher ranking templars seeking him out to take his measure. It had meant being on his best behavior. He’d made a good impression, and he wanted to keep it that way, and that meant a little less leniency than he liked to give, not looking away when he otherwise would have, reporting a few things he would normally have been happy to let slide – not reporting a few other things, that he really wasn’t comfortable ignoring.

It meant being there when the mages he had helped bring in faced trial, and then the brand.

It meant putting the ones who were left down when one, frightened and desperate, out of his mind with terror, slashed into himself with a stolen shortsword and, skin bubbling and stretching, became an abomination there in the middle of the hall.

It was going to be worth it. It had to be worth it. Already there was talk of promotions. Carver could make up for things later, once he had the power to. He could remember who needed their just desserts, once he had the power to serve them out. With a high enough rank, Carver’s friends and family would be beyond suspicion. He could do that – he could earn that for them.

He took a boat to Lowtown, the sun burning low and orange on the horizon, and whistled to himself as he made his way to the alienage, passing through streets he had once haunted with his mercenary band. The pressure felt easier, away from the Gallows. The stain he could feel growing on his soul felt like an exaggeration when he thought about how far he had come, and what he would accomplish. When he didn’t have Tranquil’s blank gazes and mages’ sad suspicious eyes and those bleeding awful statues staring at him, judging him wherever he turned.

The air in Lowtown was awful, particularly in the alienage.

But it was easier to breathe here than ever it was in the Gallows.

He wondered if he could move Merrill out of the alienage in a few more promotions. Elves on their own didn’t do well when moved out of their designated place – there was no law keeping them in the alienage, but their human neighbors tended not to take kindly to the few who tried to improve their prospects in such a way. But Merrill would be far from the only kept woman in an apartment paid for by a templar. Carver’s status could keep her safe, too. Maybe he could afford something with a view, a little garden. He could get her some half decent furniture, some pretty dresses. The sky was the limit, really, given the way he was going. Would she be insulted if he asked? Women were so tetchy about those sorts of things if they weren’t approached in just the right sort of way.

He was surprised to find that she had not lit the little lantern outside her flat like she usually did on nights she knew he would be calling on her. He knew she had been planning to go up and see her clan yesterday, but even if his brother’s poor planning had gotten them stuck on Sundermount overnight, she would be home by now. He knocked, and, receiving no answer, tried the door and found it unlocked.

Carver let himself in.

“Merrill?” he called, finding the front room dark and chill. There was no dinner waiting on the table; it didn’t look like she’d even lit the stove. The only light at all was coming from her little cubby of a bedroom. “Merrill,” he called again. “You didn’t cook?”

Carver rounded the corner into her bedroom and stopped, the smile freezing on his face. Merrill scampered up from the floor, hurriedly wiping at her cheeks with her palms. The tears kept running.

“Oh!” she said, with forced lightness. “Oh, Carver. I completely forgot – is it that time already? Oh dear, I’ve completely forgotten about dinner.”

Her clothes were wrinkled and travel stained, her bare feet still dusty from the road, her hair uncombed. He had found her on the floor, sitting before that great ugly mirror she kept in her room, the one that didn’t work.

He caught her arm as she tried to pass him by.

“Merrill?” he asked, and his other hand came up, thumb brushing the continuing tears from one wet cheek. “Merrill, sweetheart, what’s happened?”

She looked up at him, and he saw her try to smile. He saw her try to cover it with cheer, try to come up with a story, a lie, anything to make it ok, but her mouth was trembling too violently for any of it to work.

He saw her break, a second before she threw herself forward, into his arms, and with a wail, she began to talk.

The more he heard, the colder Carver grew.

\--

“Carver hit you?” Fenris repeated, flat and displeased, and Hawke waved off his frown with a frown of his own.

“Hardly the first time we’ve had a go at each other over the years. I barely felt it.”

The bruising around Hawke’s eyes didn’t look like something he would barely feel. Fenris continued to stare, and scowl, waiting for the rest of the story, until Hawke relented.

“Carver needs someone to blame for things,” he said. “Always has. Merrill told him everything, and it scared him – but he can’t blame her. He’d rather ignore the blood magic than confront it. I make an easier target.”

“You _let him_ hit you,” Fenris realized.

Hawke’s big shoulders lifted. “One,” he said. “I let him have _one_.”

Fenris shook his head. “Don’t give everyone angry at you the same shot,” he advised. “Isabela was threatening to remove your left testicle.”

“So I’ve heard. Why do you think I avoided the Hanged Man yesterday?”

“Lying low for a single day. Either you are truly helplessly addicted to the sight of that dwarf, or you would simply make a very poor fugitive.”

“Maybe it’s a little of both,” Hawke teased. He was rewarded with a quirk of Fenris’s lips, an almost-smile. They were on their way to the Hanged Man now, and though Hawke would never admit that he might have purposefully planned his departure to coincide with the time Fenris would likely head out, on the off-chance they might run into each other and have cause to walk together, Fenris suspected rather strongly that he had. Things often seemed to work out that way. “Things have to settle back to normal,” Hawke said. “Merrill can be mad at me, but I’m not going to tiptoe around the city because of it. And I don’t intend to let Isabela near my testicle. Either one of them.”

“That is a relief to hear,” Fenris murmured dryly. Then, “When were you planning to kiss me?”

Hawke missed a step.

Fenris had blurted the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since before Sundermount, and only the wild pounding of his heart as Hawke stared at him told him that yes, he really had asked him. He hadn’t planned to, hadn’t meant to, but it was out now, the question free of his thoughts and left to roam free in the world as Hawke’s mouth worked, fumbling uselessly for an answer and a part of Fenris felt a wild, reckless thrill that he had asked, even if this was not the time nor the place, walking along the streets of Hightown amid the late afternoon traffic, the sun low against their backs.

“E-excuse me?” Hawke asked.

“You’ve given every indication that you wish to pursue me,” Fenris pointed out. “Have I misunderstood your intentions?”

“No, I – you knew?”

“Did you think you were being subtle?”

Hawke has stopped walking. He looked about, as if for a witness to back him up, but there was no one in direct hearing of them, and the traffic that did pass them by paid them no mind.

“You said you’d think about it. Us,” Hawke said.

“I have,” Fenris said. “I asked you to kiss me, and you said no.”

“You remember - ? You were very drunk, you know.”

“Yes,” Fenris said. “And I have been not-drunk many times since, and still you haven’t done it.”

“I…um…you…?”

Fenris waited, crossing his arms, lifting a brow. It only added to his thrill to see Hawke sputtering and unsure, thrown off balance by words he hadn’t even meant to say. Hawke looked around again, and then strode forward, to close the space between then, to take hold of Fenris’s arm and pull him to the side, where they could find a little more privacy beside one of the neighbors’ trellised garden gates.

“Do you _want_ me to kiss you?” Hawke asked, voice low, even a little urgent.

That was a difficult question. Fenris wanted him to kiss him, but he had no experience in kissing, and no interest in sex, which was often, it seemed, for normal people, a natural conclusion to too much kissing. Except. Except he wasn’t sure, even about that. Except there were nights the thought of Hawke’s body had tormented him. Nights the thought of Hawke’s hands on _his_ body had driven him near to madness.

“I don’t _not_ want you to kiss me,” Fenris said.

“ _Fenris_ ,” Hawke said, and he sounded pained.

Fenris stepped back, put his back to the gate, all too aware of Hawke’s size, looming over him, the hand still on his arm. He pulled the mage with him.

“Would I have asked if I had an objection?” he asked. “Will you do it, or -?”

He didn’t get to finish the sentence. Hawke’s lips were on his lips, his mouth on his mouth, swallowing his words, too hard, at first, in that first rush of daring, but then softening as they both relaxed, as the excitement and the pleasure of it swept through Fenris, as he leaned back against the gate and Hawke pressed closer to him, his arms going around him, Fenris’s hands grasping handfuls of Hawke’s shirt. Hawke licked at his lips and Fenris, thrilled, terrified, opened. Hawke’s tongue in his mouth was careful, and Fenris heard himself make the kind of sound he had never heard himself make before.

They were both breathless when Hawke pulled away, the mage’s amber eyes full of some depth of emotion Fenris didn’t dare to name. His lips looked wet and swollen, and Fenris wondered if he looked so obvious, himself, staring back at him.

“Fenris,” Hawke breathed, a goofy, boyish grin spreading across the lips Fenris couldn’t stop staring at. “Um. Was that - ?”

“Yes,” Fenris said, and sounded odd to his own ears. “That. Satisfied my curiosity. Thank you.”

“I’ve been wanting to do that since the first time I saw you,” Hawke said, and Fenris swallowed, and nodded, too aware, suddenly, of where they were, and how overwhelming Hawke was, and how his body buzzed with his proximity to the man. He wanted…

“We…should move on.” Fenris suggested, with difficulty, and Hawke, still looking more than a little stunned, pulled away.

“Right,” he said. “I just, ah, need a moment.”


	9. Hightown

Hawke felt a little woozy, unreal, disconnected from reality. It seemed an impossible shift that his day could have started with Carver screaming in his face, and now the taste of Fenris’s lips was lingering on his tongue. It was surreal that both events should exist in a single lifetime, let alone occur within the span of a few hours.

Fenris looked cool and thoughtful and unaffected, when all Hawke wanted to do was haul him back into his arms. Or, better, turn around and retreat back to one of their houses, where they would have the privacy to…discuss the matter more fully.

_Yes. That satisfied my curiosity. Thank you._

They walked to the Hanged Man in silence, as if nothing unusual had occurred. Their hands brushed once, accidentally, along the way. Fenris still looked thoughtful.

Anders had claimed the coveted seat beside Hawke that he and Fenris had been squabbling over for three years, and Hawke was torn between gratitude to have some space between himself and Fenris, so he could think, and the urge to strangle the man. Anders looked like a storm cloud, like he expected – wanted – _welcomed_ – a fight. Fenris calmly took the chair opposite Hawke without comment – and then Hawke realized he would have to spend the evening _looking_ at him, which was worse, he thought, than sitting beside him would have been, because there wasn’t a subtle way he could _touch_ him when he was _across the table_.

Hawke had kissed Fenris. He had held Fenris in his arms. Fenris had let him kiss him. And hold him.

Fenris had made that – that – _noise_.

“Not drinking tonight, Big Guy?” Varric asked, shuffling a deck of cards, and Hawke gave a guilty jerk and pulled his eyes with effort from Fenris, who was not paying him any mind at all.

“I heard tale Isabela fostered aspirations concerning the collection of my balls,” Hawke said, as smoothly and as gruffly as he could. “I don’t want to give her an unfair advantage.”

Down at the other end of the table, Isabela lifted her tankard. “You see?” she asked Merrill, who Hawke was surprised to find seated in her usual place, and who still looked drawn and red-eyed. “Even the big ones get twitchy when you threaten the family jewels.”

Merrill almost smiled.

Hawke glanced, briefly, at Fenris, who casually looked away.

“Have you listened to a word I’ve been telling you?” Anders demanded. “The Tranquil - !”

“Who’s in for a round of Wicked Grace?” Varric asked, cutting the deck. “Blondie? Think you can win back some dignity tonight?”

That was enough to distract him from his rant, at least this time. “I still maintain that Aveline cheated,” he said. The guardswoman’s head jerked up in offense.

“I beg your pardon?”

And they were off, his friends bitching and bickering like any other night, cards flying, ale flowing, and Hawke almost, _almost_ managed not to spend the evening mooning over Fenris.

\--

Hawke had been walking his friends home after nights at the Hanged Man for years. Merrill first (tonight she drunkenly told him that he was a very good boy – just very wrong about blood magic), then Anders (“Are you sure you don’t want to come in for a nightcap, Hawke?”), and lastly, Fenris. Aveline and Sebastian got passes to make their way without Hawke’s help, as they were usually the first to leave and almost never got drunk.

The streets were dangerous. The practice was at Hawke’s insistence.

It had never felt like a burden, until tonight.

“Alone at last,” Hawke said, aiming for casual joviality, as he heard the clinic doors lock behind them.

Fenris was looking at said doors with a frown. “I always wonder what he expects I would do were you to ever actually accept his offer,” he mused. “Stand here and listen while you enjoy your…nightcap?”

“I wouldn’t,” Hawke began, and Fenris shrugged.

“I don’t suppose it matters, then,” he said, as they turned away from the clinic and began to make their way to one of the exits that let out nearest Hightown. “Though I’ve no doubt it would suit him very well if I did have to listen as he had his way with you.”

“He’s not the one I want.”

Fenris didn’t answer.

They emerged from the sewers into the cool night air and the star-dotted sky, their pace leisurely, the moonlight bright in Fenris’s hair.

“What if I didn’t want you?” Fenris asked, and Hawke felt a pang, and forced himself to draw a slow, deep breath. _That satisfied my curiosity. Thank you._

“Then I suppose I would be very disappointed,” Hawke said. “But I would have to respect your decision. I’m not your friend because I have feelings for you. The two are independent facts.”

“Would you take the abomination up on his offer if I was not part of the equation?”

“No,” Hawke said. “Anders is my friend, but he doesn’t – he sees the things he wants to see. We would destroy one another, and I’ve had my fill of destruction in my life.”

“But - ?”

“Fenris. I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice, but I don’t give my affections casually.”

They had stopped, facing each other in the starlit street. Hawke could see the effort it took Fenris to meet his eyes, and brief moment where he swallowed before he spoke.

“I don’t know that I’m capable of giving my affections at all.”

Unbidden, Hawke found himself remembering how it had felt to slide his arms around Fenris. The way he had tasted. That sweet moment when his lips had parted. The _sound_ he had made.

The thought that it might have just been that moment. That time. Over now, never to be repeated. Even now, Hawke wanted nothing more than to touch him. Hawke let his breath out slowly.

“That’s your decision to make, Fenris.”

He saw the elf’s flicker of surprise, quickly covered up. Fenris nodded with thoughtful dignity, and began to walk again. Hawke followed, and they were silent together, there in the Hightown night.

He stopped again, outside his stolen mansion, and did not immediately go inside. Hawke waited, at last able to admit, at least to himself, things he’d been refusing to allow himself to examine too closely for three years.

Fenris had his arms crossed, and he would not look higher than Hawke’s shoulder. “What,” he asked slowly, everything in his manner guarded, “What if I remain…curious?”

Hawke swallowed, even as his pulse jumped. He shifted, just a little bit, closer. “That’s – ah. That would also be your decision.”

“I can’t – I can’t make promises, Hawke.” His gaze flickered, briefly, to Hawke’s face, then away again. There was something dark and bitter in his voice that Hawke could not comprehend. “Do you understand? I may not be capable of – there are things you don’t know – “

“What I know,” Hawke said, so gruffly that it startled Fenris into looking at him, “What I know is that I want you. In whatever capacity you’re willing to give me.”

“Then kiss me again,” Fenris said. “Before I lose my nerve.”

He was so stiff as Hawke stepped toward him. He even took a step back, until his back hitting the door prevented him from moving further away.

Hawke resisted the urge to crowd in close, to trap him there. He felt Fenris slowly untense as he slid his hands down his arms, gently urged him to uncross them. He took Fenris’s hands in his own, and kissed what little bits of skin his armor left bare – his fingers, his palms, the insides of his wrists. Fenris’s fingers curled slightly against Hawke’s beard. His pulse beat against Hawke’s lips like something trying to escape.

“What are you doing?” Fenris asked, and his voice held a tremor.

Hawke slid a hand into Fenris’s hair, as he had wanted to so many times before. He let himself feel the silken slide of the strands against his fingers as he cupped the back of his skull. He pressed his forehead to the elf’s, sharing his breath, gaze locked on gaze.

“Hawke?” Fenris’s voice was nearly a whisper.

Hawke said, “I just want this to last a little longer.”

Fenris hesitated a moment before his hands found Hawke’s waist and slid around to rest against the small of his back. He closed his eyes, relaxing against the door as if by sheer force of will. His chest rose and fell slowly.

“Shall I say please?” Fenris asked at last, and amusement touched his nerves, and that was when Hawke kissed him, there at the upturned corner of his mouth, soft, light as a whisper, until Fenris chose to pull him closer, and Fenris pushed up, into the kiss, changing it to something deeper, demanding more from it.

He kissed like someone unfamiliar with kissing, but he learned fast, and he was bold. Hawke braced a forearm against the door as he indulged, greedy, and lucky, and –

He stepped back when Fenris placed a hand against his chest. He felt himself grinning as he watched that same hand tremble as Fenris lifted it to his mouth.

“Enough?” he asked, and even to his own ears he sounded obnoxiously pleased. Fenris looked disheveled, flushed and breathless and thoroughly kissed, and Hawke would have swept back in, if only he’d thought he would let him.

“I – think it’s time to say goodnight,” Fenris said. His voice was rough, but his eyes were bright. He smiled like a man who’d achieved some great triumph.

“All right,” Hawke said, a little lightheaded. He couldn’t stop smiling, himself. He forced himself to take a step back, and Fenris followed him with his eyes.

“Hawke,” he said, when he began to turn away. Hawke stopped.

“Fenris?”

“I suspect,” the elf said, “That we will be doing this again. Sometime.”

\--

In retrospect, Hawke shouldn’t have been surprised when he walked into the Hanged Man the next morning and Varric, somehow, _knew_.

“You do know the elf is covered in spikes, like some angsty porcupine? He might have some…issues.”

If it had been anyone else, Hawke might have been angry. He was still tempted to be. But Varric was Fenris’s friend, as well as Hawke’s, and the dwarf tried to keep an eye out for anyone who bore that title, regardless of whether or not they wanted him to.

And Fenris was –

Hawke had an inkling that the elf’s behavior had to do with more than the memory of the pain his markings could cause, but until Fenris was ready to divulge the information, Hawke wouldn’t press him. It could be as simple a matter as nerves, of never having been with another man before, and being unsure of all that entailed. Fenris had been free from years, but he was still learning what his boundaries were, how his tastes leaned, now that he had a choice in them. It was important that he have the time and space and opportunity to decide such things for himself. Whatever his reasons for caution, they were important to him, and it wasn’t Hawke’s place to dismiss them. Varric’s words of warning were just as much for Fenris’s benefit as Hawke’s.

Hawke stamped out the small flare of irritation, and gave Varric a smile. “I know you mean well, Varric,” he said, even seeing how the dwarf braced himself for a poor reaction. Varric’s relief at his response left him with a twinge of guilt. “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.”

They ordered breakfast, and went on to Varric’s room to share it, since none of the others were around that morning, and Varric, reassured that his cautionary advice had been well received, relaxed a little more.

Hawke was not one to talk about personal matters. He didn’t go to others with his problems or his successes, either one, with the exception of Fenris – and even then, there was more he could leave unsaid than said, because Fenris, somehow, always knew, always understood. Fenris watched, observed in detail, and came to suitable conclusions. Yet, to his surprise, Hawke found himself giving Varric all the details of what had happened, and how.

He was on his second cup of coffee when Varric winced and he said, “Ah, but, you know Blondie’s going to be crushed.”

Hawke fell silent for a moment, the reminder hitting like a blow, his hands wrapped around his mug as he wrestled with the sudden weight that dropped into his stomach. A part of him resented it, that he couldn’t simply have this, enjoy it. He got warnings instead of congratulations about the news, and now he had to worry about others’ misplaced affections, instead of spending his day relishing, reliving the memory of Fenris’s lips, the feel of his hair, the way he had looked at him, there in the starlit night. He hadn’t let himself hope for this, had barely let himself acknowledge that it could happen, and it now it was, and –

“I know,” he said, simply, a little gruffly. Varric looked only sympathetic.

“It’s going to be ugly,” he warned.

Again the familiar stab of guilt. “I’ve never done a thing to encourage him,” he said. He sounded harsh, dismissive. Angry. He didn’t mean to.

“Still,” Varric said, and looked very grateful that he wasn’t in Hawke’s shoes.


	10. Confession

Mornings were difficult.

Cold and hunger soaked into Anders’s bones while he slept, marinating in during a time when most folks’ bodies sought to heal. He would wake more tired than he had started, body aching, fingers and toes gone painfully numb. If he laid still long enough, Anders could feel the very blood in his veins, slow and sluggish with the Blight that would one day kill him. Assuming anything could kill him. Assuming Justice let him die. He hadn’t, before. Maybe he would just keep going, indefinitely, a shriveled, desiccated, man-shaped thing made of Blight and Bone and Justice.

His head hurt.

Eventually, Anders, aching, forced himself from bed. Pins and needles shot up his legs as his feet began to regain feeling. Anders rubbed his eyes and tied his lank, greasy hair back from his face as he shuffled to what served as his kitchen.

His groceries had not lasted long – flitted away on thoughtless donations at Justice’s sudden, irresistible urge. A bag of rice to a young Ferelden mother. A sack of potatoes to the family of a laborer who’d lost his leg on the docks. Little by little, drip by drip, bleeding him dry on Justice’s compulsion. When he was really hungry, he was almost capable of missing the days when he had been capable of minding his own damned business.

There was a little water left in the barrel, though it was clouded and grey. Not quite enough fuel to keep a fire going, either, even with magic, unless he was willing to sacrifice a few copies of his manifesto. Paper was expensive, and wouldn’t burn for long, but he was cold. Anders had them lit before he realized he was out of tea.

A rap came at the clinic door. A part of Anders wished, very strongly, that he could ignore it just once.

“Just a moment,” he said, and tried not to groan. He pulled a coat on over his threadbare nightshirt, decided not to worry himself about his bare knobbly legs poking out underneath, and prayed that it wasn’t another emergency.

It was Hawke.

Anders felt a sudden burst of adrenaline. “Let me get dressed,” he said without hesitation. “Where are we going?”

“I’m not here for a job,” Hawke said. He gestured, and only then did Anders realize that his arms were full. “Have you had breakfast yet? I was hoping we could have a visit before you open the clinic, if you have time.”

“Absolutely I have time,” Anders said, too quickly. He had no idea what time it was, but it didn’t matter. Not if Hawke needed him.

Hawke’s arrival was like the skies parting to reveal the sun after a long storm; he brought with him light and warmth and comfort, and not only because he arrived with firewood, a thermos full of coffee, and food from that high and fancy bakery he was always taking that damned elf to.

Anders bustled around getting the fire going for real and setting his rickety table with the best plates he owned as Hawke put the food out – not just the expected fruity pastries, but savory tarts filled with eggs and cheese and meat, and a loaf of bread with thick yellow butter. Hawke poured the coffee, and it was strong and bitter, but at least it was warm.

“I would have made myself more presentable if I’d known you were stopping by,” Anders said as they sat, realizing it wasn’t quite as early as he’d thought it was, and Hawke frowned at him.

“Is that my shirt?”

“No,” Anders lied, and pulled his coat a little tighter. He was surprised the faded red flannel was still recognizable after three years of hard use keeping Anders warm at night, even to its original owner. “Have – have I mentioned what a good surprise this is?” he asked, to change the subject. “It feels like ages since we’ve had a meal alone together.”

Hawke didn’t answer, and the silence stretched for a beat longer than was comfortable.

“Actually, I needed to talk to you about something,” Anders said, at the same time as Hawke said, “I came because I need to tell you something.”

Another beat of silence. Anders grinned, and reached for a pastry. “You talk, and I’ll eat,” he suggested. Hawke had taken a single pastry, himself, apple by the looks of it. He would never say as much, but Anders knew that the rest of the spread was intended for him.

Hawke wrapped his big hands around the chipped mug Anders had provided for his coffee, and he took a moment, gathering his thoughts. His words were important to him in times like this. Times when it was quiet, and Leo could shine through.

“Years ago, shortly after we met,” he began, “I promised you that when the day came that I was ready to – to be interested in someone, I – I would let you know.” He looked at Anders steadily, serious, even as Anders felt his heart stop, found himself sitting up straighter, holding himself very still. “You remember,” Hawke said. It wasn’t a question.

Anders stared at him, and his hands shook as he tore apart the pastry on his plate, shredding it nervously as his heart restarted and began to pound, violently, within his chest.

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. How could I forget? I’ve been waiting…”

Hawke flinched a little as he looked down, frowning into his coffee. His big shoulders were rounded and tense. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “We should have had this conversation years ago, but I couldn’t admit it to myself, let alone anyone else. Understand, when I denied my feelings, I wasn’t intentionally lying to you. Only myself. It was easier that way. There was too much else going on.”

“Hawke…” Anders found himself choking on a sudden surge of emotion, on the awareness of an entire universe of opportunity suddenly opening up in his mind like a flower in bloom. An endless future of mornings like this, of breakfasts with Hawke. Of Hawke in his bed.

Justice didn’t like it. Justice was no longer a separate entity, of course, or at least, not all the time, but he could feel it, the alarm that mixed with the excitement. The feeling that he was in danger of allowing himself to be distracted from his work.

“I need you to say it,” Anders said. “I have to hear the words.”

Hawke rolled his shoulders, and met his eyes with purpose.

“I’m in love with Fenris.”

Just as quickly as it had formed, that world of possibility, of hope fulfilled and patience rewarded, suddenly dropped away beneath him, and Anders was left sitting there in Hawke’s old flannel with the smile frozen to his face slowly beginning to melt. A ringing started in his ears, muffling Hawke’s next words – though not enough to soften them.

Hawke hadn’t noticed his reaction. He shoved his hands through his hair, his own face opening up. He smiled – _Leo’s_ smile – and he said, “I’ve never said that out loud. Never told anyone. But – I think it’s always been Fenris, from the day we met, I think – I’m sorry. I should have known. I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t want – Anders?”

Cold. Anders was cold in a way he had never been before. His smile had fallen away as Hawke – no, _Leo_. That was the worst of it, that it was, somehow, his beloved Leo – as Leo had babbled. He had never seen Hawke smile like that. His headache was back, building behind his eyes, and with it the part of him that was Justice. The ringing in his ears was close to deafening.

“Anders?” Hawke asked, and reached across the table. Anders jerked away before he could touch him.

Something…snapped.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that people are just sitting around worrying about where you shove your cock,” Anders said, “But maybe if you’d take a step back and stop being so bloody selfish, you’d realize that innocent mages are out there suffering!” He pushed back his chair so hard that it toppled over as he rose. Hawke’s face had completely closed off. “Have you even _noticed_ how many Tranquil are in the Gallows courtyard lately?” Anders demanded. “And don’t tell me I’m just sensitive to it. I’ve been watching, and every day there are more Tranquil, selling their bloody wares. Good mages, too. People I _know_ passed their Harrowing.”

Hawke’s face had darkened. He opened his mouth, closed it. Pursed his lips.

“What’s it to you how many Tranquil there are?” he asked at last. His voice was hard, and there was no trace of humanity in his closed, stony expression.

The ringing in Anders’s ears was still going, a persistent whine, and with it the feeling of doom, of urgency. “The templars are using the Right of Tranquility to silence those who speak against them!” he said. “They’re working on a deliberate plan to turn every mage in Kirkwall within the next three years, and you don’t even care.”

Hawke’s hands tightened around his mug, and then he deliberately pushed it away, lest he damage it. “Whatever you think of templars, you can’t imagine they’re so heartless,” he began coldly.

“They’re worse,” Anders snarled. His mind flinched from the raw, bleeding wound Hawke had torn, and fixed instead on the other, on something he _could_ focus on safely. “There are groups in Kirkwall who help those fleeing the Circle. I’ve talked to people on the inside, and the plan is the work of a templar named Set Alrik.” Yes, this was what he’d tried to tell Hawke yesterday, what he’d meant to say this morning, before he had let himself be distracted by – by – if he could just get this out, get this fixed. This was what mattered. The mages. His heart couldn’t break if it was focused on something else. Without realizing he was doing it, Anders began packing up the breakfast gifts to give away to his patients. “I’ve had a run-in with him myself. He’s the one who did the ritual on Karl. Nasty piece of work, likes to make mages beg.”

“What happened between you and Ser Alrik?” Hawke asked. He was watching him now, carefully. Anders didn’t care.

“I’ve been involved with the underground resistance,” Anders reminded him, defiantly. “The one you’re too good to have anything to do with. Mages, living free in Kirkwall, helping others escape. Ring any bells?”

“Anders…”

“Suffice it to say, I’ve been in the Gallows. I’ve seen his work firsthand.”

“What else do you know about Ser Alrik?” Hawke persisted.

He was too calm. Anders wanted him angry, wanted him yelling, throwing plates, storming out of the clinic. Everything would be easier if anyone would just be half as angry as Anders was, all the time.

“He’s a sadist. Cold-blooded as a lizard. Likes to experiment on mages, find out what it takes to put them into the arms of demons. Is that good enough for you?”

Hawke was still frowning at him. Still closed, and cold, and far away from the excited farmboy just moments ago confessing his love for the most obscenely pigheaded mage-hating asshole Anders had ever met.

He said, “How do we stop them?”

\--

Fenris found himself fighting the uncontrollable urge to smile when he opened the door to find Hawke there, until he realized who was with him.

“Are you busy?” Hawke asked, and it would have been apologetic, but his voice was too hard for that. There was a specific set to his jaw, a way he held his shoulders, that indicated enough of what Fenris needed to know, even if Anders hadn’t been glaring daggers at him over Hawke’s shoulder.

“Well, well, what a happy surprise we have here.” Fenris felt Isabela at his back, her arm draping over his shoulder, just moments before she spoke. “What a funny coincidence, Hawke. We were _just_ talking about you.”

“As you can see, I have company,” Fenris said, deadpan. “I will be happy to get rid of her if you have need of me.”

“Not at all,” Isabela sniffed. “I’ll be happy to tag along. What’s the job this time, then? Rescuing kittens? Feeding orphans. Something responsible and boring, anyway, I’m sure.”

“It’s not a job,” Hawke said. If anything, he looked even more stiff and stern with Isabela’s intrusion. “Anders wanted help with an investigation involving the templars. I’d like to have you at my back.”

“That’s a surprise. I would have thought it went the other way ‘round,” Isabela said, and grinned cheekily in response to Hawke’s expression. She leaned into Fenris a little more than was necessary. “I knew it would be boring. Still, love to participate. I wouldn’t want to, ah, miss anything. Really, who thought you boys had it in you?”

“That’s not…” Hawke rubbed the bridge of his nose. It seemed he was counting to ten. Fenris made a mental note to apologize to him later. They hadn’t discussed whether or not they would be telling their friends – and Fenris hadn’t meant to, not really. But Isabela had a way of getting him talking, poking and prodding and making jokes until he let something slip, and then refusing to let up until it all came out.

He suspected Hawke had told Varric, anyway. And judging by the look on his face, Anders as well.

“I’ll get my sword,” Fenris said.


	11. The Gallows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skipping over the actual quest, but hopefully it won't be too confusing. Please let me know if this does not work. Bit of game dialogue at the end. I hope this chapter makes sense.

Carver sat up so fast that he bumped his head on the bunk above – but at least he managed not to cry out. Waking up one’s neighbors with your night terrors was not the way to keep a good reputation within the templar barracks.

His chest heaved, and sweat matted his hair to his brow. Carver’s entire body was shaking.

“ _Maker_ ,” Carver prayed, and then, when that didn’t work, “ _Fuck!_ ”

Carver pushed back the covers and got out of bed.

It had started with Bethany. The dreams always did. The sound of her back breaking. The smell as she burned on her makeshift pyre, profile momentarily bright in the flames their brother had called to consume her. The agony of finding himself suddenly alone, when he had always been part of a pair.

Sometimes, his father was there, stern and disappointed and rotting.

“It should have been you,” Malcolm would say. Carver always agreed.

The dream had zoomed forward, year flying past year, and he was in a basement carved from earth, thick with the stench of death. Merrill sat in a throne of bones, and blood flowed in a thick river around her.

“You’re a good boy, Carver Hawke,” she said, and her voice was the voice of a demon. “Don’t you know blood magic is just a tool?”

Carver pushed away, turned, and ran down a narrow brick hall, but Merrill was there, too, smiling and placid, the brand on her forehead still fresh enough to scab.

“I’m safe now,” she said. “Leo will be safe, too.”

Carver held the brand. Merrill gestured him to a door. He could hear his brother screaming.

The memory of the dream refused to fall apart, even when Carver plunged his head into the icy washbasin.

Todric was at the door when he emerged from the water, groping for a towel. It was just past sunrise. “Get dressed,” he said, not quite quietly enough to avoid annoying Carver’s neighbors. “You’ve been summoned.”

\--

“Hawke. Come in, have a seat.”

The novelty and shine had long worn off hearing his father’s name and having the situation regard Carver, not his brother. Hard to maintain a puffed chest about being called your own name when it was just as likely to be “Hawke, clean the latrines,” as it was “good work today, Hawke.” It was a name, not a bloody title. _His name_ , and Carver had just as much claim to it as Leo ever did.

Still, today he might have rather it referred to someone else. Not that he wanted it to be _Leo_ finding himself called unexpectedly into the Knight Commander’s office, no – just that he would have very much liked it to have been anyone else in this situation.

Carver had grown up with formidable women. Mother was a force to be reckoned with, and Bethany – well, Bethy had been sweet and thoughtful and gentle, but Bethy had also possessed a will of pure iron, and woe betide anyone who truly earned her wrath. Carver should not have found the Knight Commander half so intimidating as he did, but every time he found himself face to face with her steely blue gaze, he was forced to argue very sternly with his bowels, who wanted very much to turn to jelly.

“Hawke,” she said again as he sat, and she looked at him as if she wanted to peel back his skull and wriggle all the secrets from the wrinkly creases of his brain, preferably while he screamed. “You’re the one who turned in that resistance cell.”

It wasn’t a question, but Carver answered anyway. “Y-yes ser,” he said, and tried not to squirm. The Knight Commander’s stringently tidy office felt too close and too warm. Knight Captain Cullen was there as well, a man who always looked uncomfortable, himself – as if he’d accidentally put on a pair of smalls two sizes too small. First Enchanter Orsino was also there, uncomfortable for different reasons, his usual fire tempered by an expression Carver couldn’t name.

“Your brother takes work from the Order from time to time. Helpful lad. Remarkable what he can do with that…staff of his.”

“Stave,” Carver corrected stiffly. “All the farmers in Lothering use them. Wolves, you know. We got quite handy with them.”

She didn’t press it. Rumors and questions about his brother weren’t the point of this interview – she just wanted him to know that she was aware of them. Carver’s shoulders were knotted with tension beneath his armor.

“Were you aware of the altercation that occurred in the maintenance tunnels outside our dungeons last night?”

 _Maintenance tunnels._ The only tunnels Carver knew of near the dungeons had been built by the Carta for lyrium smuggling. Carver almost failed to bite back the correction.

“I wasn’t assigned to the dungeons last night,” he said instead.

“No,” Meredith agreed. “Ser Alrik was.”

Carver was not capable of completely controlling his expression in response to the name. He wasn’t fond of the man, or his methods, and he had heard some troubling things about him that he was too low a rank to dare investigate himself. As far as he knew, no one who _was_ capable of investigating him had bothered. He’d made inquiries. They didn’t go anywhere.

“Ser Alrik is dead,” Meredith said.

“I’m sure the Order is the lesser for his loss,” Carver said. It sounded appropriate.

“Are we?” Meredith asked, coldly.

That, Carver thought, was definitely a trap. He hesitated over a dozen answers, most of which would probably get him stripped of rank and thrown out in the street

Knight Captain Cullen cleared his throat. “Last night, your bother escorted a young mage girl back to the tower,” he said. “He stated that Ser Alrik had been leading her away through the tunnels for impure purposes. The mage girl collaborated his story, as did the elf who follows your brother.”

Carver felt pale. He was glad he was sitting down. That colossal, arrogant – _of course_ Leo would march himself through a secret, _illegal_ tunnel _into_ the Gallows to turn in a runaway and report the templar he’d murdered for rape so she wouldn’t be punished for escaping. Never mind that he’d _murdered a templar_. Never mind that there was absolutely no plausible excuse for what he’d been doing in secret, illegal tunnels under the Gallows in the first place.

“What elf?” Carver choked.

Cullen made a dismissive gesture. “The angry one that is always at his side. His shadow.”

Carver’s heart unclenched a little. If it had been Merrill, he would have killed Leo himself.

“Is my brother – has he been arrested?”

“He reported an embarrassing and egregious abuse of power within templar ranks, as well as alerting us to a path through which so many mages were managing to escape,” Cullen said.

“The Knight Captain failed to think to detain him for questioning, and insists there is no reason to call him back in,” Meredith said.

“Ser Alrik’s personal effects further confirmed the charges brought against him,” Orsino said, the first time he had spoken. Meredith closed her eyes, as if his very voice were an annoyance that she struggled to bear. “I brought similar charges against him, multiple times. His guilt is well documented, even without his trophies; there is a clear history of abuse and multiple witnesses both mage and tranquil able to testify. Templars, too, if they could be made to talk. I have a list - !”

“The trouble here is that your brother also intends to alert the Viscount to the situation,” Cullen said.

“He told you that right out, didn’t he?” Carver’s voice sounded flat to his own ears.

“We answer to the Divine, not the Viscount,” Meredith said imperiously. “However – there is a certain balance that I have worked to cultivate and maintain over the years. Trouble with the Viscount threatens this balance.”

“Alrik shouldn’t have been using his position to rape mages, then,” Carver said, before he could think better of it. The Knight Commander looked as if she’d been slapped. Cullen wore a wry expression.

“Your brother said much the same,” he said.

“What is my purpose here?” Carver asked. He wouldn’t testify against his brother, however much he currently wanted to strangle the bloody reckless asshole.

“You brought in nearly an entire cell of this so-called mage resistance,” Meredith said. “And the Order is in need of further such victories in order to keep the Viscount satisfied and out of our affairs. As such, I am charging you with a bounty, Carver Hawke. One hundred apostates by month’s end.”

“One hundre - ! That’s imposs - !”

“One hundred,” she said, “And if you are even one short, we will be forced to look closer as to why. Starting by having another conversation with that brother of yours. I do hope we understand one another.”

\--

The light was off and the doors were closed, and there was no response when Hawke knocked.

Hawke let himself into the clinic anyway. Anders never locked the doors.

The space was dark and cold, the assistants sent home, the patients ignored. Hawke didn’t try to cover up the sounds of his intrusion as he made his way past empty cots and baskets of supplies. He found Anders in the little living area, separated from the clinic by ragged curtains. He was kneeling in the floor mumbling to himself, surrounded by a mess and a haphazard assortment of mage lights.

“Trash….trash…keep…”

“You almost killed that girl.”

Anders stiffened at the sound of his voice, and Hawke didn’t care. He sounded angry. He _was_ angry – and he hadn’t been home yet, hadn’t slept. Every hour since the tunnels had been spent trying to clean up the mess that had been made – talking to the templars, and the guard, and the Viscount. Though she was gone now, Hawke had had Isabela follow Anders home, not because the man had been in a state of trauma after his actions, but because Hawke had been afraid of what he would do if left unsupervised. Everything since had been work, no room for thought. Making sure the girl went back where she belonged and got there safely. Making sure she wouldn’t be held responsible for trying to escape. Making sure Aveline and the Viscount knew what was going on before the templars had time to cover it up.

Anders shifted, speaking over his shoulder, but without looking at Hawke. “Justice has been warped by my rage,” he said. “I cannot contain him any longer.”

Hawke clenched his fists, as if he could hold onto his fury like a physical thing. He didn’t want to acknowledge the hopelessness in Anders’s voice, the guilt and fear and bitterness. He didn’t want to think of the man as a friend right now – he only wanted to be angry.

Beside him, Fenris was more gentle than Hawke himself could have been when he suggested, “Maybe it’s time to realize your limitations.”

Anders did turn, then. Surprise, then betrayal, crossed his face at the realization that Fenris was here, that Hawke had brought _Fenris_. That Hawke hadn’t wanted to have this conversation alone with him. Anger was quick to replace it. “Yes,” he spat. “ _Fine._ Kick me while I’m down. Clearly _you’re_ right about _everything_.”

“It was a suggestion,” Fenris said, “Not a condemnation.”

“I will not put myself in that position again,” Anders said.

He was scared. Justice had taken him over and lashed out and he had almost – Hawke stomped hard on any smidgen of compassion he might be tempted to feel, on the guilt of breaking his friend’s heart, of the worry he always felt for the man. “You’re possessed,” Hawke said. Anders had chosen that. He had done it to himself. “I doubt _resolve_ will be enough to counter that.”

Anders stared at him for a long moment. Hawke could see it, the struggle as the other man tried to hold on to his own anger, to wear it like a cloak. Anger was easier. Anger was safer. Hawke wanted him to be angry. He wanted a fight. He found himself pleading for one. He wanted to punch him. It would feel better if he could punch him.

Anders’s shoulders dropped. “You’re right,” he said. “I cannot change who… _what_ I am.” He shook his head. His eyes moved over Hawke’s face, eyes that wanted understanding, love, acceptance. All things Hawke could not give. Not to the degree the other mage demanded. “I should get out of Kirkwall, go where I won’t hurt anyone. Would you have me leave?”

“No,” Hawke said, because saying yes would have been petty, and cruel, and he would have regretted it later. Because he always would have wondered, later, if there was something else he could have done. All of his anger drained, suddenly, as if it had never been. Hawke felt his exhaustion then for the first time. His sore feet and his aching back. He threw himself into a chair at the rickety little table, and pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Don’t give up just because of complications,” he said. He didn’t entirely agree with Anders’s cause, but there were times when it didn’t go wrong. He would have put a stop to it if he didn’t see how it did help people, sometimes. And the clinic – where would their fellow refugees be without the clinic? Maker, he was tired. “I thought you were more dedicated than that.”

Anders’s answer was stiff and cold. “Why is it you can say nothing without making me want to wring your neck?” he demanded. Hawke looked at him, felt the other man’s rage spark and flare, even as his own abandoned him and left him drained. “Fine, _yes_!” Anders spat. “I cannot give up on this cause so easily.”

Hawke glanced at Fenris, who was scowling at Anders, but who nodded, understanding what he needed, and let himself out – not out of the clinic entirely, but out of Anders’s living space, giving them the illusion of privacy. Only when he was gone did Anders move, slowly, as if Hawke were a snake ready to strike, and he sat at the table beside him. They were both quiet for a long time, taking the measure of each other, like strange cats in a back alley, ready to puff up and start hissing at the first wrong move.

“Did you…find anything on Ser Alrik?” Anders asked at last. “Or was the ‘Tranquil Solution’ just another of my delusions?”

“It exists,” Hawke told him, “But it was Ser Alrik’s plan, no one else’s.”

He gave him the letters he had found, which Anders snatched out of his hand and read, paling, looking steadily more wretched the longer they sat there.

“This was…not what I expected.”

They were silent for a while longer, the tension between them tight, even after Anders thanked him. The air was heavy with years of misunderstanding, of grudges, miscommunication, bitter resentment.

“Why do you even bother coming?” Anders asked at last, bitterly. “I know I’m more trouble to you than I’m worth. Why keep me from leaving? Why help me with supplies? Why - ?”

“I’m your friend,” Hawke said, sternly, cutting him off.

“But you won’t love me.”

“I still care about what happens to you. I’m sorry that isn’t enough.”

“You don’t even like me.”

“That’s not true,” Hawke said, and he sighed at the doubting look the other man gave him. “All right, I don’t _always_ like you. But I don’t always like Carver, either. That doesn’t mean I ever stop caring about him.”

“You would burn this city to the ground for Carver. You wouldn’t do that for me.”

“We don’t have to agree on everything, Anders.” Hawke pushed his hands through his hair and looked at him, really looked at him. He saw the other man’s exhaustion, the way his clothes hung from his frame, his long skeletal hands. He knew Justice pushed him, unrelenting. He knew madness scratched at every corner, hoping for a way in. He knew Anders needed help. “I’m sorry I can’t be the champion of mage freedom you want me to be. I’m sorry I have different priorities than you do. I’m sorry we keep misunderstanding each other.”

“Are you sorry about Fenris?”

“I’m sorry that I’m not.”

Anders flinched and looked away, his hands grasping each other tightly atop the table. “I hate him,” he said bitterly.

“I know,” Hawke said, after a moment. “But if you’re to remain in my life you’re going to have to deal with the fact he’s there, too. You’re going to have to understand that he’s important to me. And you’re going to have to keep Justice in check. Are we friends or not, Anders?”

His mouth worked, lips pulling bitterly into a frown. “If only you - !”

“There’s no if only. This is who I am, and where I stand. If you want me out of your life, that’s your decision. But otherwise, this is the line I have to draw. _Do you understand_?”

Anders was silent for a long time, but finally, he nodded. “I still don’t have to be happy about it.”

“No,” Hawke agreed. “You don’t.”

“And I don’t have to agree with you. Not on mages, and not on your choice of men.”

“At this point, it would be weird if you did.”

Anders didn’t smile at his pathetic attempt at humor, but he nodded, and he pushed up from his chair. “You’re buying me breakfast,” he said. "And the elf isn't invited."


	12. Conversation

“Keep your hands to yourself,” Fenris warned, “Or this stops immediately.”

Hawke had had a long day, and no sleep before that – which had long become his normal way of life, to be fair – so he hadn’t been surprised when he came home to find Fenris waiting for him in his study. He’d tried not to read anything into it.

Fenris had a way of knowing when Hawke was feeling low and discouraged and defeated. He had a sense, somehow, of the nights when Hawke would otherwise stay awake, pacing his study and going over every moment of his day, reliving every careless word, every bad decision, every time his actions led to someone else’s hurt, unless someone was there to distract him.

Fenris had always been subtle about it, offhand, as if he had just happened to stop by for a drink and a visit, as if there was nothing unusual about staying up talking until the wee hours of the morning. As if it wasn’t because Hawke needed, desperately, not to be alone with his thoughts. Neither of them had ever acknowledged it.

Hawke had eased off his jacket and poured them both a splash of bourbon and taken his usual chair, and Fenris –

“Do you agree to my terms?” the elf asked, standing before him looking somehow cold and aloof and uncaring, but also very, very nervous.

“This is new,” Hawke said, and then, “Yes. Of course. Whatever you want.”

Fenris downed the contents of his glass, and then he climbed into Hawke’s lap.

“That’s a thirty-year bourbon,” Hawke said, aware, suddenly, of the mistake it had been to agree not to touch him, to not even try to negotiate the terms before Fenris – _Fenris_ – was suddenly straddling his thighs in his favorite chair, his gaze sharp and intent and determined. “Hello,” Hawke added.

“Hello,” Fenris returned. Fenris had not been interested in arguing with Anders over whether or not he was invited to breakfast, and had left Hawke’s side as they left Darktown that morning. Hawke had tried to retrive him later without luck, and then had gotten busy with the usual slew of nonsense and taske. Fenris still wore his usual armor, and Hawke felt gooseflesh rise on his arms as Fenris lifted his hands and his gauntleted fingers delicately pushed through Hawke’s hair, the sharp tips of his fingers lightly scraping against his scalp.

“That – feels really good,” Hawke said, feeling a little breathless already.

“I hope you are not offended by a departure from our usual conversation.”

“I will endeavor to live with the disappointment.”

“You had better,” Fenris growled, and he kissed him.

They still hadn’t talked about it, but Hawke had a suspicion that there was a possibility Hawke was the first person Fenris had ever kissed. If so, he had clearly learned quickly from their brief encounters. Where before he had been hesitant, now he was bold, and Hawke felt a thrill at the thought Fenris might have spent the last day thinking about it, working out how and why and what he wanted to do, the next time they had a moment alone.

Fenris kissed him slowly, licking into his mouth, his hands in his hair, unhurried. He was, without a shadow of doubt, utterly in control of the interaction, drawing back when Hawke pressed forward too eagerly, tugging Hawke’s hair to get him where he wanted him.

“I want my arms around you,” Hawke groaned against his lips.

“No,” Fenris answered, “Don’t touch me,” and kept kissing him anyway. Hawke gripped the armrests of his chair as hard as he could to keep from reaching for him.

Hawke almost told him, then, the revelation he had discovered when breaking the news of their relationship to Anders – the fact that he’d realized he was in love with Fenris, had loved him for years, maybe from the first moment he saw him, the moment he heard his voice, felt that jolt, as if Fenris were someone he had known all his life, waited all his life to meet.

But somehow, Hawke’s lips had left Fenris’s lips to find his jaw, his ear, his neck, and he didn’t know if this was breaking the rules, technically, but the electric jolt of lyrium was sharp against his tongue, and Fenris’s hands were sliding over the muscles of Hawke’s shoulders, and Fenris wasn’t telling him to stop. Thoughts of confession flew from Hawke’s mind as he licked a wet trail up Fenris’s throat and heard him groan in response, as Fenris slid his hands down Hawke’s arms to Hawke’s hands, and deliberately placed them on his waist.

Hawke pulled him closer.

Fenris’s eyes were closed, his head thrown back to give Hawke access to his throat and neck. He groaned again as Hawke nipped at his earlobe, and rolled his hips forward, and –

Everything came to an abrupt stop as Fenris, suddenly, jerked away from him.

“I’m hard,” he said, some combination of realization and accusation in his words, and Hawke, out of breath and confused, looked.

Fenris scrambled out of his lap and turned away, pale and surprised, chest heaving.

“You’re not exactly the only one,” Hawke said ruefully.

Fenris said, “Don’t.”

Hawke fell silent, watching the rigid lines of his back, unsure of what to do or how to help, or why Fenris might react in such a way, except that it was doubtless an unexpected and overwhelming discovery for a man who had previously warned that he wasn’t capable of such a thing.

“It’s all right, Fenris,” Hawke said. “We can stop.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t consider – I need to think…”

“That’s fine,” Hawke said, and Fenris glanced back at him, dubious, and Hawke worked very hard to ignore the sizable erection he knew he was still sporting, even as Fenris looked at it. “Just – give me a minute. Do you want another drink?”

“I should go,” Fenris said, seemingly speaking to Hawke’s cock, since that was where his eyes lingered.

Hawke said, “Please don’t. Just – just give me a minute.”

Fenris turned away again, but he didn’t leave. They let silence fill the air.

Fenris’s body language screamed tension. It was an intensely private moment, him working through whatever it was that had stopped him in his tracks. Hawke tried not to watch, but he had trouble tearing his eyes away, locked on every movement the elf made, every breath he took. Fenris scrubbed his hands over his face, pushed them through his hair – and seemed surprised when he turned to find Hawke watching him.

“Maker but you’re beautiful, Fenris.”

Hawke hadn’t meant to say it, the words escaping him unbidden, and Fenris laughed a little, as if in disbelief. His shoulders softened.

“How far do you think flattery will get you?”

“Nowhere. I just had to say it.”

Fenris shook his head, but he was smiling, a little. He returned to Hawke’s liquor cabinet, and his hands only shook a little as he poured a drink.

“I’ve never – done that,” he said, conversationally, as he poured.

“Had an erection? No, surely you - ?”

“No, of course I’ve – just, not when I was with another person.”

“I’m flattered.”

Fenris capped the bottle, and rolled his shoulders before meeting Hawke’s eyes. “I’m not a virgin,” he said bluntly. “I just never – you’re different. You make me feel…different.” He crossed the rom, back to his usual chair, and he sat. His gaze was direct. “That’s all I wish to say on the matter at this moment.”

“Then that’s all you need to say,” Hawke lifted his own, untouched glass from the table, and gave a salute. Fenris returned the gesture with something like relief in his smile.

\--

In some bout of either insanity or poor judgement, Hawke found himself seeking Varric out the next day to discuss these new developments.

It was midafternoon. Fenris had stayed until almost sunrise – relaxed and talkative, and though neither of them brought up their burgeoning romance again, Fenris kissed Hawke when he walked him to the door: a firm, determined kiss that had them both a little breathless before he finally left.

After, Hawke went to lay down, hoping for an hour’s rest.

Instead, he slept seven.

Hawke felt – cheerful. Excited. It was a new experience. He had spent so many days, months, years with the weight of the world on his shoulders – first the secret of his powers, then his family’s survival, then the well-being of the friends he had come to claim in Kirkwall, and the acquisition of the money to pay off the templars, and returning the house to his mother’s care, and keeping Kirkwall’s nobility from ostracizing them, and - 

Malcolm had instilled Hawke’s sense of responsibility in him. Hawke’s oldest memories were lectures about his responsibility, his place in the world, the burden he would be forced to take up. He was the oldest child. He was a mage. He was a Hawke. This had always set him apart from his peers, left him isolated, odd man out. Aside from a brief and promiscuous period of popularity after puberty, ended in humiliation and shame, this had held true all his life. Three years ago, the friends Hawke made had seemed more like added responsibility. He hadn’t known how to speak to them. He cared for them, but hadn’t known how to allow them to care for him as well.

It had taken time, but perhaps he was learning it now, how to let his friends into his life, his heart, even when they disagreed, even when they were at odds. Things would work out with Anders, with Merrill. Things with Fenris were a dream.

Hawke couldn’t wait to tell Varric. It didn’t fail to strike him that this was the first time in his life he had had that. He wanted to talk about it. Wanted to tell his friend, to share his joy.

It was a wonder what getting some actual sleep could do to a man.

For the first time, Hawke was aware of the chorus of voices that greeted him when he walked into the Hanged Man. Men he had been drinking with for years, but never paid mind to. Dockworkers and refugees and guardsmen who were glad to see him, who welcomed his arrival. Hawke had lived his life in his own bubble of isolation – it was striking to realize that bubble was gone.

Varric wasn’t at their usual table, but working from his rooms. Hawke found his door open, and let himself in. The sight of the dwarf at his writing desk, a plate of untouched lunch at one elbow and an empty bottle of something or other at the other, was a familiar one. It wasn’t one of his novels he was working on, but a stack of personal business. Letters, bills. That was why he hadn’t left his rooms to work.

Hawke helped himself to a chair without invitation, and idly picked up an envelope.

“Is this from Bartrand’s caretakers?” he asked. Varric gave a humorless laugh.

“The Chantry might run the sanitorium, but it’s anything but a charity. They are charging me an arm and a leg to keep his crazy ass there. They’d take the beard off my neck, if I had a beard.”

“If you need help,” Hawke began. The dwarf waved him off.

“You can order another pitcher of ale,” Varric said. “That’s how you can help.”

It had been months ago, now, that they had gotten word of Bartrand’s return to the city. When they had tracked him down, they’d found him driven mad by the idol he had abandoned them over, now sold off to some woman Varric had thus far failed to track down. He had committed monstrous atrocities in his madness, force feeding lyrium to his men, cutting pieces off his servants. Varric had wanted to kill him. Hawke had stopped him.

“He’s not showing any improvement yet?” Hawke asked.

“Forget him,” Varric answered. “You have got to hear this, Hawke.” He signed a check, and pushed it away, settling back in his chair and removing his reading glasses. He folded his hands across his stomach with a look of pleased satisfaction. “This this tale making the rounds: they’re saying you single-handedly fought off a pirate invasion at midnight, on the sacred ground of the chantry.”

Hawke checked the bottle, found enough left for one more glass, and poured it for himself. “Strange that people would get such an idea out of the blue,” he murmured dryly.

Varric failed to look the least bit ashamed. He shrugged. “I may have embellished a detail or two here and there. A little. And…added a few things that didn’t happen. For pacing, you understand. Just don’t be surprised if people seem a little in awe.”

Hawke shook his head. He couldn’t stop a chuckle. “What compels you to spend these ridiculous tales?”

Varric took the glass from him before he could drink. “I love the sound of my own voice,” he said. “And I’m a compulsive liar.”

Hawke got up to order a plate for himself, and another bottle.

“I’ll try to quit exaggerating before it goes to your head,” Varric said, later, after they had made a significant dent in their repast. “In the meantime, let me say, serah, how great it is to see you still have all your limbs. Things are going well with the elf, I take it?”

Hawke couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face.


	13. The Coast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes for this chapter:
> 
> 1\. The beginning is exposition that alludes to Fenris's time and relationship with Danarius. If this will bother you, please skip to the next scene.   
> 2\. I skipped over an in-game fight scene because I didn't feel like writing it. I hope that it is not too weird, pacing-wise.  
> 3\. Speaking of, I feel like this chapter is really short and I'm too tired to edit it but I want to post it anyway. Please accept my apologies if it's a mess.

Fenris was trying to reconcile himself to the fact he wanted to sleep with Hawke.

He had promised Hawke once that he would think about it – about the two of them, the now impossible-to-deny mutual pull they felt toward one another, this gravitational force that found each seeking the other out, again and again, without fail. He had thought about it. Endlessly. For months. Fenris had thought about Hawke. He had thought about Hawke’s body. He had thought about Hawke’s mouth. He had thought about Hawke’s _hands_.

He _wanted_ Hawke.

It obsessed him, taunted him, kept him up at night, how much he wanted.

Kissing had been a mistake. Kissing had opened up a new world, an entirely different font of experience, beyond anything he could have expected. Kissing fed his imagination, invaded his dreams. Kissing expanded curiosity into – into _urges_.

Fenris knew, in the logical part of his mind, that such things were natural. It was not the first time in his life his body had felt a compulsion, quickly and discretely taken care of; it was merely the first time another person had been involved in the rising of such a compulsion. And he knew, in that same quietly logical place, that parties the world over partook in such activities in a mutually enjoyable manner. He knew his prior experiences were not to be expected. He knew Hawke, with his kindness and his unshakable self-control, would do everything he could to make the act pleasant.

And he knew, just as surely, that he would not like it.

The fantasy shattered when Fenris reached thoughts of the actual act. He knew what that felt like – painful, humiliating, powerless. Hawke could, what – at best, make it merely uncomfortable? He was broken. He would not like it.

Danarius had never been intentionally cruel in his attentions. He wasn’t sadistic, merely practical. Fenris had merely been the convenient receptacle for the body’s more inconvenient urgings – those urgings, perhaps, helped along by the fact he was fucking the terrifying wolf his peers so openly coveted. It had almost always been quick and to the point, and rarely featured extra frills, and Fenris’s body had never once responded to it, and had never needed to. Danarius had not cared whether or not the object he spent into enjoyed the act. Fenris hadn’t known to question it. Back then, Danarius had been his world, and Fenris had served obediently, however the memory sickened him now.

But Fenris responded to Hawke.

Every time Fenris had himself talked out of this ridiculous venture, he found himself swinging back around to that. To how Hawke made him feel. To curiosity. To _want_. He wanted Hawke’s hands on his body. He wanted Hawke’s lips on his skin. He wanted to take Hawke’s clothes off, and feel the overwhelming strength and size of Hawke pressed close. He wanted to know what it was like. If it was different. How it was different. If anyone could make it different, surely Hawke –

He forgot, almost, when he was with Hawke. Forgot everything but the way he saw him, and spoke to him. The way he touched him. The way he kissed him. Sometimes, when he was in Hawke’s company, he never thought of the past at all, but only the present, and the excitement that curled in his belly, low and warm, when Hawke looked at him the way he did.

Fenris wanted – he wanted –

He _wanted_.

What was a little discomfort, if it came with all the rest? It wouldn’t be bad. Hawke would do his best for him. A few sweaty, undignified moments, and in return he could have _Hawke._

\--

“You’re here early.”

“I didn’t wake you, did I? I brought breakfast.”

Fenris stepped back to let Hawke into the house, and he managed not to reveal that he was awake because he had spent too much of the night replaying their last encounter, trying to imagine what it might have felt like, had he asked Hawke to touch him.

“I thought we could go out to the coast today, get out of the city,” Hawke was saying. “I’ve got a few errands to run I’ve been putting off. We could make a day of it.”

“If you like,” Fenris said, and he sounded too careful, too guarded, even to his own ears. When Hawke looked at him, he forced himself to uncross his arms. “Do I…owe you an apology?” he asked.

Hawke’s brows furrowed in confusion. The expression would have looked hard on anyone who didn’t know him. “An apology?” he repeated.

“For my behavior. When last we met.”

“For stopping?” Hawke asked. “Or for…”

Fenris was not a man easily given to embarrassment. One did not spend years of one’s life on literal display every waking moment, subject to comments, vile speculation, even the occasional daring hand, for him to blush at provocation.

But when Hawke looked at him, Fenris felt his face grow warm.

“For whichever you believe merits it,” Fenris said.

Hawke answered, “Absolutely not.”

Fenris struggled with the urge to argue, but reluctantly relented.

They shared their breakfast in the kitchen, which Fenris had considered to be mostly clean until he got in there with Hawke and began to notice things his eyes had merely passed over when he was alone – dust in the corners, and grime in the sink. A family of spiders living quite a comfortable, well-established life above the window.

“Next day I have free, I’m fixing this,” Hawke said of Fenris’s wobbly table and set of four mostly-broken chairs.

Somehow, later, Fenris ended up perched on the edge of the counter, Hawke standing, thrillingly, between his legs, his big hands tight on Fenris’s hips as he licked honey from Fenris’s lips, slowly, meticulously, and Fenris, dizzy with him, forgot about breakfast, forgot messy kitchens, forgot evil magisters all together.

It was a while before they left to collect the others.

\--

Fenris was feeling generous enough not to mind that Hawke had invited Anders. He was even feeling generous enough to ignore the knowing looks Isabela kept casting him when Hawke wasn’t looking. Hawke was on uneasy ground with both of them, and had planned this day as a way of taking steps toward amends, as he tended to do. He likely had invited Merrill was well, though it seemed she had declined. An easy day on the coast, to ease tensions, and let them remember that they were friends, because he was terrible at apologies.

And Fenris was a part of it simply because Hawke wanted him to be.

Hawke had a basket with lunch from the Hanged Man, and the weather was good, and his hand brushed Fenris’s when the others weren’t looking. Neither one of them managed to stop smiling for very long, and it was only a matter of time, Fenris thought, before someone else noticed. Such a thing would be unbearable – Isabela would tease them relentlessly, Anders would sulk. It would derail Hawke’s entire plan. Neither could help himself.

Even with the salt spray, Fenris still tasted honey.

He almost missed the signs of the trap.

\--

Hawke felt a cold rush of dread the minute Fenris stopped walking. His entire manner changed – the way he held himself, the look in his eyes. Hawke knew, a moment before Fenris spoke.

“Hunters,” Fenris said.

Hawke saw them too late. The mercenaries stepping out of concealment, the ambush laid. They had walked directly into it.

“Stop right there!” the speaker was a man with expensive armor and heavy moustaches. He carried himself as if aware of a sure thing – and utterly sure of the measure of his own success. “You are in possession of stolen property,” he said. “Back away from the slave now, and you will be spared.”

Hawke was already reaching for his stave. The fear and rage and guilt that bubbled up within him roared in his ears. “Fenris is a free man!” he snarled.

“I won’t repeat myself. Back away from the slave – now!”

“I am not your slave!” Fenris was alight with fitful, flickering lyrium.

Hawke had a spell gathered before the first sword was drawn.

\--

“Where is he?” Fenris demanded.

“Please!” the mage begged. “Please, don’t kill me! I don’t know. I don’t know, I swear!”

Hawke was watching him, and Fenris didn’t care. All he saw was red. All he felt was –

“Hadriana brought us!” the mage babbled, terrified, pathetic. “She’s at the holding caves north of the city! I can show you the way!”

Fenris was a fool. He was a fool, and he had been careless, and he had brought this on himself.

“No need,” he answered. “I know which ones you speak of.”

“Then let me go, I beg you! I swear I won’t - !”

“You chose the wrong master.”

Fenris was hardly aware of killing him. Hardly aware of anything but the panic threatening to rise up and choke him, the feel of filth on his skin. He wanted to keep killing, but he was out of bodies. He wanted to run away, but running had never helped.

 _Hadriana_. The name brought bile to his throat, revulsion, terror, fury. He hadn’t realized he had spoken until he turned, and when he found Hawke’s eyes on him, he could not meet them. “I was a fool to think I was free,” he said. “They’ll never let me be!”

“This is someone you know?” Hawke sounded too calm. His voice was hard but – but calm. Fenris struggled to gather himself. He wanted to scream. He wanted to fall apart.

“My old master’s apprentice,” he said, the words bitter, sour. That life did not belong to a man who had honey licked from his lips in a messy kitchen. _Fool, fool, fool_. “I remember her well,” he said, a little desperately. “A sniveling social climber who would sell her own children if she thought it would please Danarius. If she’s here, it’s at his bidding. I knew he wouldn’t let this go.”

Hawke reached for him, and he jerked away. Hawke let his hand drop without argument. His expression was hard, unreadable, except Fenris could read it. The tense way he held his jaw, the stoniness in his amber eyes. “They need to be stopped before this goes any further.”

Fenris tried – he tried to think. Tried to push through the panic, the anger, the _memories_. How could he have forgotten what he was? _Hunted_. “The – the holding caves held slaves in the old times, but apparently they are no longer abandoned,” he said. “We must go quickly, before Hadriana has a chance to prepare – or flee.”

Hawke didn’t hesitate. He said, “Take me there.” 


	14. Hadriana

Fenris was holding himself together by sheer stubborn willpower alone. Varric’s comments about porcupines made more sense when he was like this, but it had been a long time since Hawke had seen him so – guarded. Whatever emotions raged within him - panic, terror, fury – his face showed little of them. He looked almost haughty as he stopped outside the cave, his chin thrust forward, his eyes looking past Hawke. It was the eyes that gave him away, his eyes and his hands. He always struggled with eye contact when he was upset. His hands were too restless.

He bore little resemblance to the man he had been this morning, rising sunlight bright in his hair, honey and laughter on his lips, the low, intimate rumble of his voice as he teased Hawke, and Hawke tried, and failed, to find the courage to tell him he was loved. Hawke knew if he reached for him now, he would find only sharpness and steel. As much as he wanted to hold him, to shield and protect him, he knew it would only make this worse. That was not who he was. And even if he could – even if, somehow, Hawke could take Fenris away, secret him off to the ends of known civilization and beyond…

Danarius and his hunters would still come.

 _It’s time to turn and face the tiger_ Fenris had said once, years ago.

“We must be careful,” Fenris said, turning toward him, his eyes flickering past. He was _scared_ , and there was nothing Hawke could _do_ and that was the worst of it. Hawke’s jaw hurt from clenching it so tight.

He swore to himself that every man he found in those caves would suffer.

“There were many such holdings once,” Fenris said, gesturing vaguely at the caves. Trying, trying so hard to hold himself together, focusing on facts, on what he could readily see, instead of the unknown horrors lying in wait. Facts were easier. “Especially in the mountains where the individual slavers kept private pens. They were designed to protect against raids by fellow slavers. No doubt it’s why Hadriana chose this place.”

Anders opened his mouth to comment, and Hawke shot him a warning look. Beside him, Isabela was fingering her daggers.

“Do – slavers attack each other often?” Hawke asked, just because he knew Fenris was still gathering himself, because he knew he needed another minute before he could make himself step into the darkness.

“They did,” Fenris said. “What better way to find slavers than to steal them? The holdings outside of Tevinter have mostly been abandoned, but they still exist.”

Hawke wanted to push his hands through Fenris’s hair. He wanted to kiss his forehead and promise to protect him. He wanted to send him back to Kirkwall, to wait at home with Mother and Flower and half the city guard on call.

Instead he said, “Hadriana won’t escape us.”

Fenris ducked his head. When he lifted it, he met Hawke’s eyes and held them for a long, purposeful moment. “Let’s hope this isn’t a waste of time,” he said. What Hawke heard was _let’s hope this isn’t goodbye._

Hawke left the lunch hamper from the Hanged Man outside the cave, feeling foolish that he still carried it. Today was supposed to have been something light and fun, a chance to reconnect with Anders and Isabela, a chance to see Fenris smiling and relaxed.

He left those thoughts outside, too.

\--

“They’re still here,” Fenris said. “Good.” The bravado in his voice barely wavered. He was a man unto himself, apart from the other three, and Hawke tried not to let it hurt that when those walls had come back up, he had been left on the other side.

It hadn’t taken them long to find the hidden entrance to the holding cells within the cave system. Ancient dwarven ruins, surprisingly close to the surface, retrofitted with Tevinter locks and traps and cages. Fenris had spoken of their history, because he had needed to talk. How these chambers might once have been used for trade with the surface, in times unknown. How the Tevinter slavers had painted the murals of suffering slaves on the walls to keep those who were brought in reminded of their place. Psychological warfare; there were manacles set against the walls, and iron cages. Fenris said that, once, they all would have been filled, the fear and suffering of their occupants feeding the feed and suffering of those brought in after, breaking spirits quickly and efficiently.

“A pliant slave is a boon to his master,” Fenris said, and Anders scoffed.

“How did _you_ ever manage?”

“I – was pliant,” Fenris said.

“I’ve been in a sex dungeon that looked like this,” Isabela said, as if unaware of the heavy mood. “Do you see those spikes on the walls? Imagine if they were purple phalluses, and you’ll get the idea.”

“I can see it,” Anders said. “Sounds charming.”

The first two chambers were empty, and showed no signs of use. Were it not for footprints left in heavy dust, Hawke might have thought they were in the wrong place.

Then they came across the altar.

It had been hastily thrown together; a cheap wooden camp table with a bit of Tevinter heraldry thrown over it, half burned candles at the ends. The corpse was that of an elderly elven man, his throat and his wrists sawed through, bowls underneath for collected blood. There was no sign that he had been tied or chained, as if he had willingly laid himself down for slaughter. His eyes stared at them sightlessly as they approached.

“See for yourself,” Fenris said. “The legacy of the magisters.”

“Blood magic,” Anders answered, almost dismissively.

Fenris glanced at him darkly. “In a society where mages rule, they find many ways to justify their need for power.”

Anders rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath, but Fenris had already passed by the bloody mess and didn’t notice. Hawke stared at the corpse for a long moment before he called fire to consume it.

He felt certain the man hadn’t fought, even knowing what would happen to him.

They met their first resistance in the third chamber, where the mercenaries had set themselves up a kind of makeshift bunker. Unprepared for their arrival, a few of the men were napping on cots, and a group were even playing cards at a table. Fenris flew at them without warning, in that frozen instance where they were surprised at the arrival of strangers.

Hawke burned four in their beds.

Some kind of alarm went up, and after that they were ready for them.

Hawke, who still remembered the ache of the burden of the first lives he had taken, did not hesitate now. The sightless staring eyes of the sacrifice were there whenever he closed his eyes; the thought that the man might have meekly laid himself down to be killed, because that’s what his masters asked of him.

 _I – was pliant_ , Fenris had said, with such shame that Hawke’s entire body recoiled, and he could not say why. He pictured Fenris in the cages they passed, in the manacles on the wall. He saw Fenris’s face in the murals defacing the walls. In his mind’s eye, he pictured Fenris obediently laying himself out, exposing his neck for the blade.

Today, Hawke did not hesitate to kill.

In the fifth chamber, they found more sacrifices, more dead slaves. And one alive.

“This is a demon at work,” Anders said, of the carnage. Unlike the first sacrifice, the slavers had not bothered with a table and bowl and candles. The slaves had been slaughtered with quick, efficient brutality, then piled up in corners to rot. “By this point, there’s nothing left inside.”

The one surviving elf was female, filthy and gaunt and frightened, and she shrank back from their approach, even as Fenris strode forward and grabbed her arm.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded. “Did they touch you?”

She didn’t struggle against him, her large eyes terrified and tearful. “They’ve been killing everyone!” she said, and worse than the desperation in her voice was the confusion. When Fenris released her, she rubbed her arm as if it had hurt, but did not run or try to put space between them. “They cut papa, bled him…”

“Why would they do this?” Hawke asked, though he already knew. The girl looked at him like a child who had been abandoned in the dark, helpless and trusting and afraid.

She hesitated to answer. “The magister…she said she needed power, that someone was coming to kill her,” she said, and then, desperate for him to understand, “We tried to be good!” she promised. “We did _everything_ we were told! She loved papa’s soup. I don’t understand…”

“Is the magister still here?” Hawke asked.

She nodded, hugging herself. “I…I think so. The magister said they were to prepare for battle. I think she’s very frightened!”

“She has every reason to be.” Fenris’s snarl was quiet, but the girl shrank back, then threw herself at his feet.

“Please – please don’t hurt her!” she begged. “She’ll be so angry if you hurt her!”

Fenris didn’t answer, and would not look at the girl. His hands were clenched so tightly they trembled. Hawke tried, very hard, to be gentle as he helped her back to her feet. Her skin felt thin and delicate, like a stray thought might bruise it.

“This has been terrible for you,” he told the girl. She shook her head.

“Everything was fine until today!” she swore. Fenris made a sound.

“It wasn’t,” he said, and he sounded…ashamed. Hawke stared hard at him, willing him to look at him, but he would not. Hawke wondered at the memories that no doubt played themselves across Fenris’s mind, for him to sound like that. “You just didn’t know any better.”

“Are you my master now?” the girl asked, reaching, tentatively, for Fenris’s hand.

He jerked as if she had struck him, and moved several paces away, making sure that Hawke stood between them. “No!” he said, with such vehemence that her face crumbled, her shoulders curling inward.

“But…I can cook,” she said, her voice small. “I can clean! What else will I do?”

Fenris had no answer for her. She stared at Hawke when he patted her shoulder, and pointed her to the way they had come. “If you go to Kirkwall, I can help you,” he promised. He tried to sound gentle, tried not to frighten her further. He must have had some degree of success, because she nearly crumpled with relief, thanking him, praising the Maker for his kindness, even as he walked her to the door and explained to her the way to go, and what to tell Bodahn when she got there.

When he returned, Fenris’s lip was curled, his arms crossed protectively over himself. “I didn’t realize you were in the market for a _slave_ ,” he snarled, and Hawke stopped.

“I gave her a _job_ , Fenris,” he said, as clearly and patiently and firmly as he could.

It took a moment, even then, for him to understand. His glare lost its potency, and a flush creeped across his neck. Fenris looked away quickly – down, at his feet, and then at the wall. He swallowed, hard. “Ah,” he said. “Then…that’s good. My apologies.” Hawke again wanted to reach for him. He wanted to _reach_ him. Whatever war Fenris was fighting in his mind, Hawke wanted to be there, fighting with him. He wanted to – wanted to make him – to force him to understand, somehow, that he was not alone. That Hawke would not let anything happen to him. That they would paint the walls red with the magister’s blood, if that was what he needed to feel safe, if that’s what it took to wash away whatever it was that had been done to him before.

But he couldn’t. Even if there was a way, Hawke would not want to take it. Fenris had to decide for himself that he was safe, and free. He had to see on his own that he was not alone. He had to be the one to decide to let Hawke in – Hawke could not force his way, big and blunt and bullying, through his barriers.

He had never felt like more of a stranger than he did in that moment, standing there outside Fenris’s trauma, the elf refusing even to look at him, with no way to reach him.

“Let’s find Hadriana and be done with this place.”

\--

The magister Hadriana had filled her reserves with blood magic, and was waiting for them with the majority of her forces. When one man fell, she called demons to fill his body, so that, for a time, the forces they fought seemed endless.

Kirkwall was a dangerous place to practice magic. They veil was thin, and the spirits were hungry. For once Hawke barely noticed it. He pulled deeply from the Fade, and he fought, and when his body ached from the strain of magic, he used his staff, blunt and brutal.

When Hawke was angry, he made it a point not to turn that anger to violence. But today he let it fuel him, push him, keep him moving, steady, unshakable as a mountain, ignoring injuries and exhaustion and the throb of the Fade. He took satisfaction in the crack of a skull under his staff. He felt soothed by the screams of the dying. As if each slaver he faced was personally responsible for Fenris’s pain, he cut them down, one after another, until the last enemy fell.

Hadriana was a severe-looking woman with dark hair and eyes like ice. Looking at her, it was clear that whatever warmth or humanity she had come into this world with, she had traded away long ago. A long wound across her midsection had her on the ground, but it was not something that could not be healed, if given the chance. The blood seeped, thick and slow, through the fine pale silk of her robes.

Fenris stepped between her and her staff as she reached for it, and he kicked it further out of her reach. He lifted his sword to take the final blow, even as she, weak, tried to push herself away. Her back hit a corner.

“Stop!” she pled, as he took the final step toward her. “You do not want me dead.”

“There is only one person I want dead more,” Fenris answered.

She spat blood, panting, clutching the wound in her abdomen. “I have information, elf, and I will trade it in return for my life.”

“The location of Danarius?” he snarled. “What good will that do me? I’d rather he lose his _pet_ pupil.”

Hadriana was not a woman given naturally to smiles, but she smiled now, an expression so unsettling that Hawke almost took a step forward to kill her himself.

“You have a sister,” she said. “She is alive.”

Fenris almost dropped his sword.

Pushing herself against the wall, the magister managed to sit up a little more. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, smile becoming more of a smirk, knowing and superior and cruel, blood and smeared lipstick lurid and dark against her pale skin. “You wish to reclaim your life?” she asked. “Let me go, and I will tell you where she is.”

“How do we know you’re even telling the truth?” Hawke demanded, and Fenris stiffened at the sound of his voice, but did not take his eyes from Hadriana to look at him.

“You don’t,” the magister laughed. “ _But I know Fenris_. I know what he’s searching for. If he wants me to betray Danarius, he’ll have to pay for it.”

Something sick twisted inside Hawke. Hadriana looked at Fenris the way someone who had witnessed a man’s deepest humiliations might, and though he could not and did not want to begin to guess what those might be, he saw that she had enjoyed them. Hadriana was injured, at their mercy, pleading for her life, and yet somehow he could feel the history between them, the threat of the power shifting. Fenris, head bowed, hands on his sword, the slave who had served without knowing to question. Hadriana, the magister who had seen it, supported it, enjoyed it.

Hawke shifted, moved a little closer to Fenris, and he pitched his voice low. It came out harder than he meant. “This is _your_ call,” he said, the best he could do to remind him that the past was gone, and he was free, and Hadriana had no power over him.

“I have your word?” Hadriana taunted, dangling the bait before him. “I tell you, and you let me go?”

Fenris sheathed his sword, and he knelt in the blood before her. “Yes,” he said, a hand against the wall behind her head, his face so close it was as if he intended to kiss her, the intimacy of the past and the torment she had given him there for them all to see. His eyes were locked, hard, on hers. “You have my word,” he purred.

She laughed, and her head fell back for a moment in relief, her shoulders shaking. “Her name is Varania,” she said at last. She drew out the name, enjoying it, enjoying that even now, she held power over him, that she had won, even still. “She is in Qarinus serving a magister by the name of Ahriman.”

“A servant. Not a slave.”

“She’s not a slave,” Hadriana said, and this seemed to amuse her, too. Her eyes were bright, haughty, superior, victorious.

Fenris said, “I believe you.”

It happened before anyone could have thought to react. A flash of blue, and Fenris’s hand was buried deep in Hadriana’s chest. He stood, pulling her, dragging her to her feet by his hold on her heart, and he held her gaze hard with his own as he clenched his fist hard round the organ.

Hadriana fell to the ground like a discarded doll. Fenris had turned away before she hit the ground.

“We’re done here,” Fenris said, flinging the crushed remains of her heart away from himself like it was filth, and he headed for the door.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Hawke asked.

Fenris stiffened, rounding on him. His rage burned hot and bright as he snarled, “No! I don’t want to talk about it!” He put himself in Hawke’s face, as if he wanted to fight. He pushed him, one bright, bloody handprint staining Hawke’s shirt over his heart. Hawke didn’t so much as sway. “This could be a trap!” Fenris said. “Danarius could have sent Hadriana here to tell me about this _sister_. And even if he didn’t – trying to find her would still be suicide! Danarius has to know about her, and has to know that Hadriana knows.” He pushed Hawke again, pushing himself away with the action, when Hawke again wasn’t moved, and raked his bloody hands through his snowy hair, staining it. “All that matters is that I finally got to crush this bitch’s heart,” Fenris said. “May she rot – and all other mages with her.”

“And here I thought you were _unreasonable_ ,” Anders began, lightly, but he stopped when Isabela stamped, hard, on his foot.

Hawke hardly noticed. He reached for Fenris. “Maybe we should leave,” he began, gently.

“No.” Fenris said, and shook him off with unexpected violence. “I don’t want _you_ comforting me.”

Hawke dropped his hand. Watching Fenris stalk away, he had a moment where it seemed that was the end of it, and then the elf rounded on him again.

“You saw what was done here,” Fenris said, jabbing a finger at the carnage around them. “There’s always going to be some reason, some excuse why mages need to do this. Even if I found my sister, who knows what the magisters have done to her? What has magic touched that it doesn’t spoil?”

Hawke stared at him, and he didn’t have an answer. There was no justification for this. No way to prove, to promise that it wasn’t the case, that there were exceptions - that _he_ was an exception – no way to ask Fenris to _make_ that exception, even if he could prove it. How could he expect Fenris to continue as they had, with _this_ over both their heads?

The moment lasted too long. Hawke took too long to answer, his eyes locked on Fenris, heart breaking as he felt the distance growing between them, where that morning there had been none. A chasm he didn’t know how to cross, and wasn’t sure he had the right to ask to be allowed to. The taste of his lips and the sweetness of his smile melting away like memories of things that had never happened – the illusion of a possibility they had come so to grasping.

As he had so many other times, Fenris was the first to look away. His hands lifted, scrubbing over his face, pushing hard through his hair, leaving bloody mess in its wake.

“I…need to go,” Fenris said.

Hawke let him walk away.

The silence in his absence was deafening. Something dripped, somewhere in the cave. Blood, or water. Another sacrifice, another slaver, a wasted life, either way. Hawke could feel the eyes of his other friends like weights against his skin.

“Isabela, make sure he gets home,” he said at last.

When she was gone, Anders opened his mouth to say something, and Hawke fixed him with a hard stare.

“Don’t,” he said, and it sounded more like a plea than an order.

For once, the other mage listened.


	15. Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to bump the rating all the way to Explicit for one scene, but I did bump the rating to Mature.
> 
> I hate to spoil what's coming, but since presumably we've all played the game, we should all know, anyway.
> 
> There is an explicit sex scene in this chapter. If you do not want to read an explicit sex scene, please skip the last scene, marked by ---***. There is nothing plot relevant to this scene. It is there because I thought it important, but you will not miss out if you choose to skip it. If you are a minor or uncomfortable with this type of scene, please protect yourself.
> 
> Also, for those who have perused my writing tag on tumblr, I did steal a bit of this from one of my old drabbles.

They walked in silence, and were nearly back to Kirkwall before Anders suggested they go to the Hanged Man.

Hawke’s answer was, “No.”

“You want me to be your friend, let me bloody well be your friend,” Anders said. “You need a drink. Or seven.”

Hawke didn’t answer, but as they passed through the gates of the city, his feet took him to Lowtown.

Varric was there, and Merrill, and somehow they only needed a glance at him to know. They had been playing some game with marbles, forgotten immediately as Varric yelled for Norah to have a pitcher sent up to his rooms and Merrill, ice between them suddenly melted, hurried to Hawke’s side.

“Oh, but don’t you look terrible,” she said, pushing up on tiptoe to stoke his hair, to check his forehead for temperature. “Are you hurt? Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we? Hello, Hawke, do you hear me? Hello! This way, please!”

Hawke cleaned up at Varric’s wash basin, without help, despite Merrill’s offer. “I’m fine,” Hawke said, and accepted a drink, and sat at Varric’s table and woodenly recounted the day’s events without embellishment. “It’s fine,” he said, and only drank half of what he was given, and excused himself in less than an hour.

Anders almost followed. “Hawke,” he said. “I wish you’d – “

“I’ve got to make sure the girl made it,” Hawke said. “I’m fine.”

Hawke barely registered the walk back to Hightown. It was now late afternoon, nearly evening. The day felt like one of the longest of his life, even counting the flight from Lothering. Hawke was fine. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all. He let himself into the house.

Fenris stood quickly from his place on the bench.

Reality snapped back into place around him. The elf who stood before him was the Fenris he knew, not the man he had parted with in the holding cells. He could see the regret in him, even before he spoke. He could see the fear, the flinching, even as Fenris squared his shoulders and made himself make eye contact. They regarded each other in silence for several moments, eyes moving over one another, each unsure over what to say. Fenris had cleaned up. He was wearing fresh armor, and his hair was damp from the bath. It took obvious effort for him to continue to meet Hawke’s eyes – but he still made that effort.

“Fenris,” Hawke began.

“I’ve been thinking about what happened with Hadriana,” Fenris said, at the same time. They fell silent again. Fell back to staring. After a moment, Fenris took a step forward. “I took my anger out on you, undeservedly so,” he said. “I was…not myself. I’m sorry.”

Something in Hawke, something tight and terrible, eased, even as it hurt, the thought that Fenris might think an apology was necessary. That Hawke might be upset because he took his words personally, and not because of – of what they meant.

“There’s no need to apologize,” he said, and he hoped Fenris understood. He was only relieved that he hadn’t managed to confess his love that morning. How much harder would this be, if Fenris knew.

“You…are generous,” Fenris answered. He looked away, swallowed. Hawke saw the effort it took him to force his next words out. “When I was still a slave, Hadriana was a torment. She would ridicule me, deny my meals, hound me sleep. She… Because of her status, I was powerless to respond, and she knew it.” He paused for a moment, on the verge of saying something more, then stopped. Instead, he met Hawke’s eyes again. “The thought of her slipping out of my grasp now…I couldn’t let her go. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.”

“I’m glad you killed her, then,” Hawke said.

Fenris’s lips almost smiled. He held himself apart from Hawke, and Hawke kept his hands to himself. He couldn’t find the meaning behind the way the elf was looking at him.

“I should be happy now that Hadriana is dead,” Fenris said. “Instead, I feel nothing but…disquiet. This hate…I thought I’d gotten away from it. But it dogs me no matter where I go. To feel it again, to know it was they who planted it inside me…it was too much to bear. But I didn’t come to burden you further.”

“We’re friends, Fenris,” Hawke said, firmly. Whatever else, they had that. They had to have that.

It was on the tip of his tongue, to ask him to come in, have a drink. To tell him it was all fine, they could still be – whatever they were. He couldn’t summon the words before Fenris answered, “I’m not certain I know what that is.”

He headed for the door, and Hawke did not stop him.

\--

Hawke didn’t let himself follow. He didn’t let himself go upstairs, lie down, and mourn what could have been, either. That Fenris had come to him at all told him all that he needed to know. His feelings would not change, but he could accept Fenris in whatever capacity Fenris was willing to give. Fenris couldn’t return his feelings, couldn’t continue on the way they had been, and that – Hawke would adjust. He would be all right with that, because that was what Fenris needed.

At least Fenris was still in his life.

Hawke found the very confused Bodahn in the kitchen with the slave girl, whose name was Orana, and who had made it to the house without more trouble than getting lost twice – which was better than Merrill had managed, her first time.

“Your mother hired a new cook this morning,” Bodahn said.

“Tell whoever it is that they’re dismissed,” Hawke instructed. “Don’t skimp on the severance.”

Hawke had Orana follow him to his office where he drew up a work contract with hours and salary and expected duties, and if he was more generous than necessary with the terms, it was only because she didn’t know how to negotiate on her own behalf, and he didn’t want to be left wondering later if he had been fair enough.

“Sign here if it’s agreeable to you,” Hawke said, and Orana looked at him with huge eyes.

“Sign?” she asked. “Oh, no sir, I wouldn’t dare!”

It took a while to figure out that she could not read or write. A while longer to convince her that it was all right to make her mark on the contract. Longer than that to reassure himself that she did understand and agree to the terms, and wasn’t merely agreeing because she thought she was expected to, hadn’t simply signed because he had told her to do so. He considered, for a long time, putting the contract in the fire and starting over. She watched him, eyes huge and scared and eager to please.

“You’re free to leave service, whenever you want,” he said, and pointed to the clause again, and she nodded, and he wasn’t sure even then that she understood.

He filed it with his papers.

After, he showed her to the house’s servants’ quarters, and gave her the key to her room. “This is the only copy, so be sure not to lose it,” he said. “When we moved in, I made sure to repair the leaks in the roof, and mother stocked the room with linens, but if you aren’t comfortable, or if you find something else you need, you must let me know. Orana – do you understand me?”

“I will let you know, master.”

“ _Hawke_ ,” he corrected, again. He placed the key in her hand. “I’ll ask mother to take you out tomorrow to purchase more clothes. She seems to be out at the moment.”

“That’s very kind,” she said, all big eyes. “And when shall I come to service you, master?”

It took him a beat to understand the question. When he did, he recoiled with such horror it frightened her.

 _“No,_ ” Hawke said. It came out surprisingly high pitched. When Mother came home, he would ensure that she took over managing the staff. “Do I – ? Wait. Let me get the contract. I’ll read it to you again.”

\--

Hawke was exhausted and night had fully fallen, by the time he felt reasonably reassured that everything was settled, and returned to his study. It was good to stay busy – he _wanted_ to stay busy. He knew that if he tried to sleep, he would fail. For once, it wasn’t the faces of men he would kill who would haunt him. It was thoughts of the sacrifices, and the way Orana had said _service_ like it was something expected, and Fenris.

Fenris –

Fenris was in his study.

Hawke stopped at the sight of him, standing by the chair he usually occupied during their visits, his hands tight against the upholstery, fidgeting, head down.

This was the kind of day that Fenris would come to him at the end of.

Hawke had not expected to see him.

“Fenris?” he began, and his voice was hoarse.

Fenris would not look at him, even as he approached.

“I have been thinking of you,” Fenris said. It was a confession, a growl, low and private and - “In fact,” he said, “I have been able to think of little else.”

He stopped, just short of Hawke, and Hawke drew in a breath at the closeness of him. When he lifted his head, the look in his eyes stopped Hawke’s heart.

“Command me to go,” Fenris said, “And I shall.”

“No need,” Hawke answered, his voice hoarse, struggling to find the words.

Fenris moved. He pushed up on his toes, his hands lifting to Hawke’s face as lips met lips and Hawke felt it all leave him – all the worry, the stress, the sadness – and there was only his arms sliding around Fenris, and Fenris’s arms around him, mouth against mouth and –

The kiss broke for only a moment, Fenris’s eyes widening as his back hit the wall, and then he was pulling Hawke back to him.

\---***

Fenris didn’t know what he was doing, only that he would rather die than stop.

He wasn’t sure what it was that had decided him, only that he _was_ decided.

He had tried to leave, and he could not bear it.

 _We’re friends, Fenris_ , Hawke had said, and it had sounded final, and empty, and Fenris knew, given the out, that it was not and would never be enough. He was tired of fear. He was tired of letting what had been done to him dictate his actions. He did not want _friends_.

He wanted Hawke.

That was the only thing that mattered.

There was no describing the excitement, the thrill, the freedom that washed through him the moment Hawke’s lips crashed into his own, the moment he felt his body pressed, strong and large and overwhelming, so close to his own, just as he had fantasized about. He was dizzy with the scent of Hawke, the taste of him, the power. He could feel him quickening against his thigh, and he was not alarmed or afraid. He wanted – he _wanted_ –

Hawke’s mouth was at his neck. He slid his thigh between his legs and Fenris ground against it in response, before he could even think do to otherwise; he wanted Hawke to feel it, how he reacted to him, wanted Hawke to know. He felt him smile against his skin.

Hawke drew back, just a moment, the question in his eyes, his hands at the clasps of his breastplate.

“ _Yes,_ ” Fenris said, a snarl, and pulled him back to him. The armor hit the ground with a clank neither of them noticed.

They fed at each other’s mouths, tore at one another’s clothes, all restraint between them now gone. Fenris shoved at Hawke, followed when he moved backwards, not willing to allow a bit of space between them, pulling off his tunic as he moved, breathless at the way Hawke’s eyes moved over him.

They left a trail, tripping and stumbling from the study, unable to break away from one another for even long enough to pay attention to where they were going. Fenris’s belt, his gauntlets. Hawke’s shoes. Hawke grunted against his mouth when he hit the bannister hard enough to bruise, and Fenris swallowed the sound when his own back hit a wall, hard, once again. His hands were fists in Hawke’s hair, tight, pulling him where he wanted him, his mouth hungry, desperate, and he had no protest as Hawke, with a noise of frustration, lifted him bodily and continued on his way to the bedroom.

“ _Hurry_ ,” he demanded, pressed to the door as Hawke fumbled to get it open. His entire body felt flush, warm, heart hammering, every inch _wanting_ , and Hawke cut off his next words with his mouth, holding him tightly, _grinding_ his body against him, hard and slow and deliberate, and the friction – it – Fenris didn’t recognize the sound that came from his own mouth.

Hawke got the door open and stumbled into the room, momentum carrying them forward, and Fenris felt his back hit the mattress, hard. Hawke’s mouth fed at his, his body bucking against him, those hard muscular planes he had admired for so long now tight against him, those big calloused hands pushing splaying, warm and greedy against the bare flesh of Fenris’s chest and back and stomach, wherever he could find. Fenris rocked his body up against him, impatient to feel him, to satisfy this frantic need, and Hawke groaned against his mouth in appreciation.

“Door,” Hawke realized after a small eternity, pulling himself back, breath heavy, eyes molten as they raked over Fenris, hair a disheveled mess. Fenris’s pulse pounded in his ears. He pushed himself up on his elbows to watch Hawke go close and lock the door. He felt wild, reckless, breathless. His heart was going to pound its way out of his chest. He made a sound he had not intended to make when Hawke turned back to him, pulling his shirt off over his head. The firelight flickered over Hawke’s broad, hard muscles in a way that made Fenris ache. Hawke’s severe face was so serious, his eyes like fire, and Fenris thought he had never felt so excited in his life.

“Get back here,” Fenris said, and Hawke moved.

He spilled to the ground at Fenris’s feet, his hands immediately going to his waist, tongue wet and warm as it traced the musculature of his lower belly. His hands were large and warm and firm, moving lower, sliding against his spread thighs, and when Hawke pressed his mouth over him through the cloth of his leggings, Fenris forgot how to breathe.

“ _Hawke - ?”_

It was confusing, overwhelming. He didn’t – no one had ever – but Hawke had drawn back again, and he was hooking his fingers in his leggings, and the smalls underneath them, and Fenris was lifting his hips to let him, to help him pull them down over his thighs, spilling him out, so hot and hard with anticipation that his head was already spinning, and then Hawke – Hawke’s mouth –

The sound he made was strangled and unfamiliar, eyes blown wide as they stared at the dark head between his legs, one hand flying out, fingers blindly raking his shoulder before moving up to cup Hawke’s head. His mouth – his tongue – the hot warm slide up the length of him, then back down again – taking – swallowing – _fuck_ – and Hawke’s hands were caressing his thighs, his breath against his flesh, his thumbs firm against his skin, his beard brushing places Fenris had not once had the courage to imagine. His hips jerked, involuntarily at first, and then with intent, and Hawke’s big palms were pushing them back against the mattress, holding him still as he licked and sucked and worshipped, the noises wet and lewd and impossible. Fenris fisted his hand in Hawke’s hair, and those eyes lifted to meet his own, and he was lost.

It didn’t take him long, and he didn’t think to give warning, and Hawke didn’t seem to mind. Licking, swallowing, humming to himself and Fenris felt dizzy and vague and half out of his mind with release, staring at him there.

Hawke’s grin was like nothing he had ever seen, as the mage rested his chin against his thigh, his hair standing at all ends from Fenris’s tugging. “You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” he said, with the kind of raw, naked adoration that would shock anyone who knew him. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the day I met you.”

 _Why_ , Fenris wondered, but couldn’t have begun to ask, but Hawke’s grin was only growing.

“I’ve never seen a man so happy to suck a cock,” Fenris murmured, instead.

“I’m very happy to suck that cock,” Hawke answered. He sat back on his heels, his eyes so warm, and his muscles so distracting, it took Fenris a moment to remember that there would be more. “Do you want to keep going?” Hawke asked, as if he could read his mind.

“Yes,” Fenris answered, before he lost his courage.

He watched Hawke rise and go to the bedside drawer. Fenris felt shaky as he reached to pull his leggings and smalls the rest of the way off. It felt strange and cold to be nude, his passion sated, his thoughts more clear. Hawke looked to be on the verge of dumping the contents of the drawer out on the floor as he struggled to find what he was looking for. Fenris’s stomach dropped when he triumphantly produced a small vial of oil.

“Carver thought it was some kind of joke, giving me this,” Hawke said with a laugh, tossing it to the bed.

“I don’t think this is the time to be talking about your brother,” Fenris answered, not looking at it.

Hawke’s smile was almost enough to put his nerves to rest. He had never seen the man look happier. If he could keep his attention on Hawke, nothing else would matter. “I think you’re right,” Hawke said. “I think you’re the only person in the world right now.”

“Take off your pants,” Fenris ordered.

This part he understood. It wouldn’t be bad. Hawke would be kind.

Fenris drew in a breath at the sight of him.

“What do you feed that?”

“Don’t worry – it’s friendly.”

“I imagine so. Maker, I knew you were big, but…”

Hawke sat beside him, and reached to cup the back of his head, and he surprised Fenris by how gently he kissed him, unhurried, full and slow and deep. Fenris could taste himself on his tongue, and did not find it unpleasant. He let Hawke press him back against the bed, aware of the urgent press of his naked cock against his thigh, just as he was aware that this was _Hawke_ and no one else, that he _wanted_ to be here, and that he did not want to stop.

Hawke’s kisses were almost leisurely, and he did not know he could bear to hold himself back, to take it so slow.

“Shall I take the position?” he asked when their lips parted, and he succeeded in keeping his tone light, because Hawke was smiling, nuzzling his neck, his large hands sliding against his skin.

“You’re so beautiful,” Hawke said.

Fenris answered, “You’ve mentioned that.”

“Would it be a bad time to tell you I loved you?”

“I already said you could fuck me,” Fenris said, surprising himself with his chuckle, with how light he felt, even knowing what was about to happen. “Why waste the flattery?” He made sure Hawke was watching before he turned, shifting up onto his hands and knees, offering himself, and he heard Hawke release one loud breath. He could feel his eyes against his skin, a moment before his big hands slid across his back.

“It’s not flattery if I mean it,” Hawke said. His hands slid across Fenris’s ribs, down over his backside, and Fenris shifted, spread his legs a little more. He felt the mattress shift as Hawke moved behind him, and Hawke’s solid presence at his back, then he felt Hawke’s breath against his skin. Hawke kissed his neck and his shoulders, the sensitive tips of his ears. “I’ve loved you for so long,” he said. Fenris closed his eyes.

“Show me,” Fenris ordered.

He smelled the oil when it was opened, and pushed down his nerves with every ounce of control he had. He was grateful there was oil, and not a lubrication spell. He was grateful for a lot of things.

He wasn’t expecting how slowly Hawke pushed a finger into him, how carefully, how gently. He wasn’t expecting the way Hawke kissed him, tracing a sensitive line of lyrium along his shoulder with with his tongue, and told him, again, “I love you.” He had never anticipated the way he would melt under Hawke’s gentle, thorough attentions, even before a second digit joined the first, and Hawke curled his fingers, and found something within him that had him gasping, shocked, pushing back against him, gasping for breath. Elves were notoriously quick to recover, prized for their stamina in bed, but it still surprised Fenris when found himself hardening again, already, so soon after climax, in _this_ position, while Hawke was doing _that._

“ _Hawke - !”_ he gasped.

“There?” Hawke asked, sounding so satisfied, so pleased, and he curled his fingers again, and Fenris moaned, pressing his forehead into the mattress, pressing his hips back toward Hawke.

Hawke was thorough, stretching him, pleasing him in a way Fenris hadn’t known to expect, so by the time Hawke moved to enter him, Fenris _wanted_ him to, wanted –

“ _Maker – Fenris - !”_

He could feel how careful Hawke was, how he shook with the restraint he showed, bowed over him, aware of the challenges of his size, a hand grasping tight at Fenris’s hand as he waited – he _waited_ , impossibly, for Fenris to adjust to him.

It was _Fenris_ who, catching his breath, was the first to move, _Fenris_ who set the pace. Fenris, pushing back against him, grasping the sheets in his hands, until Hawke, reassured, began to move on his own, to thrust, slow at first, gentle – then faster, harder, as Fenris, forgetting everything, met him. Hawke’s hand slipped down between his legs, found Fenris hard again, and Fenris cried out at the shock of his hand against his cock, Hawke buried, throbbing, deep inside. Hawke hooked an arm around his chest and he pulled him up, so they were both on their knees, Fenris’s back pressed to his chest with Hawke’s arm around his torso, and his other hand moving against his cock, and nothing, nothing but the pleasure existed anymore. There was no Hadriana, rotting in a holding cave on the coast. No Danarius, biding his time in Tevinter. No past of pain and humiliation.

There was only Hawke, within him, around him, above him. Hawke’s voice in his ear. Hawke’s hands against his skin. Hawke, obliterating everything else.

“I love you, Fenris,” Hawke said, destroying everything but this moment, this pleasure, this warmth and comfort, his arms and the strength of bis body and the power that he held. “I love you,” he said. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”


	16. Later

“I like that look on your face,” Hawke said, and Fenris lifted his brow.

“What look would that be?”

“Relaxed. So damned satisfied,” Hawke couldn’t stop grinning as he got back into bed.

“Credit where credit is due,” Fenris said, and he stretched, luxurious, and reached for him. His smile was easy. He had been almost boneless as Hawke had gotten them cleaned up, sleepy and content. Even now his eyes were heavy.

Hawke thought he had never been so happy. He kissed those smiling lips, and kissed them again, because he could.

“You came twice,” he couldn’t help but point out.

“Elves are plucky that way,” Fenris answered. “Give me a moment, and I think I can rouse again.”

“It will take me a little longer.

“I trust you’ll take care of it.”

“Spoiled,” Hawke said.

Fenris laughed, softly. He pulled Hawke back to himself.

“I want to spend the rest of my life making you happy,” Hawke said. Words had never been easy for him, but tonight, for Fenris, they were. They were always easy with him.

“Whoever would have dreamed you’d become so affectionate once gotten into bed?”

The low, contented, _amused_ murmur of Fenris’s voice brought a new thrill of happiness through him. Hawke said, “You must bring it out in me.”

Fenris seemed pleased. He pulled Hawke’s arm around himself, directing Hawke’s hand between his legs, where he was again, easily, rousing once more. As Hawke began to lazily stroke him, he lifted his arm to examine the bit of red Hawke had asked him to wear, that Hawke had wound around his wrist with all the care and solemnity of a religious ritual.

“Explain this again?”

“It’s a family tradition. A favor. A reminder of what you mean to me.”

“And what is that?”

“You’ve already forgotten?”

Fenris smiled as Hawke curled more closely against his back. He felt the elf arch, pushing himself more tightly against him, as his body happily began to respond to Hawke’s attentions attentions.

“If you meant it,” he said, voice growing breathless, “Say it again.”

“I love you,” Hawke answered, without hesitation. That thrilled him, too. It was so natural, so right to say, that he wondered how it had taken him three years to do it. He tilted his head, kissed Fenris’s ear, the back of his neck. “I love you,” he said again. “I love you,” he whispered, a prayer. “I love you.”

\--

A gasp tearing itself from his throat, Fenris bolted upright. He felt like a drowning man breaking the water’s surface, chest aching, heaving for breath, his heart making a bid to escape his chest. Sweat covered his naked body, chilling him as it cooled. He stared in horror at the unfamiliar room, and for a moment, he forgot where he was.

Claustrophobia gripped him, uncompromising and animalistic in its sudden intensity. In terror and disgust, he threw off the large, hairy arm draped across his belly, and he scrambled from the bed. He stared, horrified, at its sleeping occupant, frozen for a moment before he could turn away.

Fenris tore at his hair with hands like claws as he paced before the fire, as if somehow he could grab the rapidly fleeing memories as they escaped, cram them back into place, tucked within the creases and crevices of his brain. He felt tears roll hot and fat down his cheeks. The sense of loss was incredible, a gasping, gaping hole in his very soul.

Shadowy forms replaced that which moments ago had been the faces of - who? Surely, he had loved them. The warmth of a mother’s hands, the echo of a father’s lullabye, gone as if they’d never been, and in their place only the face of the master he had been disgusting enough to love. Danarius had been his world, his history, his beginning and his end, and now the memories fled, and _Danarius_ was all that was left.

A ragged sob tore his throat.

He _ached_.

The walls were pressing in.

Fenris dressed in a hurry, desperate for the comfort and the weight of his armor, frantic when he could only find his shirt and smalls and leggings, and not the armor pieces themselves. His lyrium marks, in answer to his distress, lit, seared his flesh, so even the touch of his clothing brought pain. He staggered with the intensity of it, the marks as raw and unforgiving as they had been when they were new.

Fenris caught himself against the mantle, struggling to swallow another sob. It choked him - the terror and the heartbreak and the knowledge that, mere moments ago, he had remembered it all. Danarius felt so close it was as if he were standing in the room, waiting at his back. He felt the ghostly pull of thin, greedy fingers through his hair, and cringed away from nothing.

Panting, dizzy, and overwhelmed, Fenris hung his head. He could feel that man’s touch, his possessing gaze. He could hear his voice, the only clear memory he possessed. For a cold, anguished moment, he thought the man was _there_ – thought he had not escaped, or had been caught, or -

Behind him, the person in the bed shifted and stirred. Fenris didn’t see the smile that crossed that bearded face when the mage saw him, or the way warmth and affection turned those eyes to molten gold.

He jerked at the sound of Hawke’s voice, wrenching, painfully, from the terror of his thoughts.

“Was it that bad?”

Fenris turned, too quickly. He stared, struggling, as the rest of the pieces of his life settled, slowly, back into place. Slowly, the phantom memory of Danarius faded like fog in the sunlight. It seemed an eternity before he could understand that Hawke was there, before he could remember who Hawke was, and why he was important. His life seemed fractured into two places – two illusory worlds, wherein he was both a slave and free.

Hawke was smiling sleepily, boyishly, rubbing at his eyes, his hair a mess, his amber gaze soft and content as he stretched and sat up, and it seemed to Fenris as if he could not be real – as if last night had not been real. It made more sense for him to have imagined it all, for Danarius to be the reality and Hawke the illusion, and he –

Hawke –

 _Hawke_ …

He couldn’t do this.

“I’m sorry,” Fenris choked out, hurting, struggling, and he watched the sleepy affection in Hawke’s face slowly turn toward confusion and concern. “It’s not…” he said. “It was fine.”

Hawke frowned at him, rubbing his eyes again, and he lifted a brow, and Fenris _ached_.

“No,” he said, his voice thick. “That is…insufficient.” Every word felt like a knife. He couldn’t. He _couldn’t -_ “It was better than anything I could have dreamed.”

Yes, it had been.

_He couldn’t!_

“Was it too strange?” Hawke asked, gently, concerned, now. “To be with another man?”

Fenris almost laughed, but he knew it would break him. Hawke’s lips at his neck. Hawke’s hands on his skin. Just as he had wanted. He’d _wanted_. Fenris turned away again, pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “It’s not that,” he said. He could feel Hawke’s gaze, like a fire. Hawke, so stern and unyielding and blunt and – so gentle, so loving, so patient. He forced himself to face him. “I began to remember,” he said. “My life before. Just…flashes…” How could he explain? He barely understood it himself, except that he couldn’t do this. He needed to leave. “It’s too much,” he said. “This is too fast. I cannot…do this.”

Hawke sat up more, put his legs over the side of the bed, and Fenris backed away. He could not bear to be near him. The thought that Hawke might touch him sent pain and terror shivering down his spine.

Hawke stayed where he was.

“Your life before?” he asked, still patient. “What do you mean?”

Fenris shook his head. “I’ve never remembered anything from before the ritual,” he said. “But there were…faces. Words. For just a moment, I could recall all of it. And then it slipped away.”

“Don’t you want to get your memories back?” Hawke asked.

Talking wasn’t helping. He couldn’t stand it, suddenly, that patience, that gentleness, the way Hawke sat there, at the edge of the bed where they had made love, and calmly tried to _help_ him through this. “Perhaps you don’t realize how upsetting this is,” Fenris said, turning from him again. “I’ve never remembered anything, and to have it all come back in a rush, only to lose it…” to have it all replaced, again, by Danarius. “I can’t,” Fenris said. “ _I can’t_.”

Hawke’s voice, behind him, was too quiet. “You’re going to leave,” he realized.

The red on his wrist looked too bright. He almost pulled it off. Fenris rounded on him again, and thought of how he had held him, how he had touched him. _I love you, Fenris_. He couldn’t bear it.

“I’m sorry,” he choked. “I feel like such a fool.” Hawke opened his mouth to answer. Fenris continued, before he could. “All I wanted was to be happy, for just a little while,” he said. Pled? _He couldn’t._ “Forgive me.”

He fled, and Hawke did not follow.

\--

Anders was furious.

Hawke was supposed to read his manifesto – no matter how often he updated it. That was one of the deals they had negotiated, to get their friendship acting like a friendship again. Hawke was supposed to come by once a week to discuss Anders’s last pamphlet, and pick up anything new he had written. Their agreed-upon day was Tuesday, and if Hawke couldn’t make it, he was supposed to send word.

He hadn’t made it.

And he hadn’t sent word.

Anders paced, staring at the stack of notes on his desk as if he could set them on fire. He considered, briefly, actually setting them on fire. But he had made some good observations about Maferath this time and he thought this version might finally be the version to change Hawke’s mind about mages. His words would have an impact eventually, he just had to explain himself right – and he didn’t have a hope of that unless Hawke actually read what he had written.

That disastrous instance on the coast had been days ago. The mages from Tevinter hadn’t made a good case for themselves, no, and so when Hawke had initially missed their appointment, Anders had reluctantly let it go. The timing was bad. Bringing up the rights of mages to be free when they had just so recently spent an afternoon dealing with the consequences of blood magic and human sacrifice was not a good idea, and even Anders knew that, but Hawke hadn’t even stopped by to apologize for missing their meeting or reschedule and it had been _days_.

It was the _principle_ of the thing but, also… it was the practicality. Anders was out of money, and Hawke not coming by meant Hawke not offering him jobs, or loans, or groceries. No one else had heard from him lately, either. Anders had been determined that he would not go begging for the man’s attention, but –

His stomach rumbled. He glared at his manifesto. He decided.

\--

At the door, Hawke’s little dwarven manservant Bodahn looked unsure, even startled to see him.

“I beg your pardon, messere, but I’m not sure I should be letting anyone in right now,” he said. “The lady of the house is out, and I’m afraid…” he glanced back, toward the stairs, his short thick fingers wiggling. “Well, I’m afraid our master Hawke is still feeling poorly.”

“Hawke’s feeling poorly?” Anders repeated. “He’s ill?”

“Well…”

All of the anger Anders had felt himself building up drained from him, the words to the lecture he had been working up to during his walk leaving his tongue. “I’m his healer, man, why didn’t you call for me sooner?”

“He’s awful cross when he’s not feeling well, messere,” the dwarf warned, but Anders was already brushing past him, heading for the stairs, his manifesto tucked tightly under his arm, his step determined.

Another protest from his stomach momentarily stopped him.

“And bring up some food,” he added.

“We have a wonderful new cook!” Bodahn said brightly. “But, you see, she’s out with the mistress right now…”

“You have hands, put something together. I’ve got to tend to Hawke.”

“He won’t like that…” the dwarf mumbled, but he shuffled away. He had a few other things to say, but Anders was already on the stairs, taking them two at a time. He wracked his brains for any memory of injury that Hawke might have sustained on the coast and kept hidden, and failing to think of anything, he began instead to think back through the most recent illnesses that had come through his clinic. The fact Hawke hadn’t come to him for help was more alarming than infuriating. If it had been stubbornness, they would have Words. But if the illness was simply too critical for Hawke to have made the trip…

Oh, Anders would strangle that dwarf for not sending for him.

Hawke’s door was locked, but Anders had been breaking locks since he was twelve. A quick burst of magic blew through the offending doorknob, leaving a sizable hole in its wave. The door itself swung open, and –

Hawke’s room smelled like an alehouse.

It was dark, the curtains all drawn tightly over the windows, the fireplace long cold. Anders couldn’t even see Hawke until he summoned a magelight and found him, lying on his belly diagonally across the bed, his head near the foot. The sheets were all askew, half the mattress uncovered, but he was under the comforter.

He lifted his head just slightly, groaned, and covered his eyes with his hand at the intrusion of the light.

“Get out.”

Anders was well acquainted with that tone of voice, as well as the Look he was receiving. Hawke didn’t need his height or his muscles or his power to be terrifying, all he needed was his face, and that particular expression, though the usual blaze in his amber eyes seemed dulled and flat.

“Anders,” Hawke added, belatedly, when he didn’t move. “Just let yourself in these days? I don’t…not in the mood for…” Oh, there was danger in that tone. Anders had gone ‘round with Hawke many a time, had argued and argued with him till Justice threatened to climb up his throat. He wouldn’t let _tone_ scare him off.

“How many days have you been in here?” Anders demanded. He strode across the room, his boot hitting an empty bottle and sending it rolling. Manifesto clutched tightly to his chest, he got the fire lit with an irritated flash of magic from the other hand, small enough to barely singe him. The logs were fresh, but the fireplace looked like it hadn’t been cleaned out in some time.

“Get out,” Hawke said. “Before I… just get out. I don’t want to see anyone. Bodahn!”

“Are you _drunk_?”

Hawke had retreated under the comforter, but one arm, left bare, waved absently. “Out,” he said, and, “Fire that dwarf on your way.”

Anders stalked to the bed, furious. “You missed our meeting for _this_?” he demanded. “Don’t you remember that there are people who need you?” When he didn’t get an answer, he grabbed and forcefully yanked the comforter away. Hawke was naked underneath. He only had a moment of stunned surprise, enough for Hawke to grab it back and wrap it around himself.

At least he was sitting up now. Anders tried not to think about the brief flash of bare skin as the other mage’s feet hit the floor. With the added glow of the fire to help him, Anders could see now that Hawke looked terrible. His hair was lank and greasy, unwashed for several days. Dark circles stood out like bruises under his eyes. He rested his forearms on his knees, his shoulders bowed, his head hanging.

“Hawke,” Anders said, and for the first time it occurred to him to ask, “What happened?”

Hawke shook his head. His big hands scrubbed at his face. For a moment, Anders didn’t think he would get an answer. For a moment, Anders almost poked at the inconceivably _wrong_ notion that Hawke might have, recently, cried.

“I – did something wrong,” Hawke said, at last, voice rough. “I just don’t – I can’t figure out what.”

“Hawke?”

“He left,” Hawke said. He looked up then, and the pain was clear, and pleading, somehow, lost, and Anders couldn’t understand it. “It’s over,” he said. “Fenris. He – left.”

Anders stared, uncomprehending.

And then, revelation struck, like a punch in the gut. He felt his manifesto slide from his arms.

He said, “Oh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 1/16/21: So the companion fic for the Legacy dlc is now up, and takes place after this chapter. I will hold off on updates here until I've finished that. It was the best way I could think of to incorporate the dlc without throwing everything else off course. I hope it works ok! I should have thought to mention the interruption when I first posted this chapter, but I hadn't decided yet if I was going to place the dlc here or after 17. Enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> kaerwrites.tumblr.com


End file.
